Have you ever walked away from buying a marble that you really like? If it wasn’t the price that discouraged you, perhaps it was the lack of provenance or the absence of a signature on an obviously hand made marble. Marble “buyers” frequently think about marbles as “investments” and they approach purchases armed with a list of requirements.
Marble “collectors”, on the other hand, might use other criteria: uniqueness, beauty, form. Collecting marbles is not rocket science! Use your eye and your heart! When we started many years ago, we knew that we would be collectors. Many of our purchases were made simply because the marble intrigued us. Even without an artist’s or crafter’s signature or a clear idea of where/when/who, we purchased marbles that are a mystery; many of these are still a mystery to us.
In this post, we want to take you a little deeper into our collection and share a few of the marbles that we chose with our eyes and hearts. Most people might have walked away from these. But they all add something to our knowledge about marbles and of American history.
A Pink Toe Breaker
The featured image is a gorgeous marble! We bought it in May 2023 at the Marbles in the Mountains Marble Show and Sale in Pigeon Forge, Tennessee. It is a 1⅞” handmade art marble. It has a white opaque base with soft tiny blue swirls running pole to pole. There are also just one or two streams of blue swirl.
But what is most striking about this marble are the bright pink swirls pole to pole. There is some translucence on one pole.
While it is hard for us to imagine, this beautiful marble is unsigned and undated. The owner whom we bought the marble from knew nothing of its history and we cannot find more online.
We do know marble artists who will not sign their work. Some feel that signing would mar the art. And we know of one case in which an art marble was badly marred by the signature!
The point that we make here is that if you enjoy art marbles then you really should not shy away from one that really appeals to you just because it is unsigned. While you may never learn who made it, you can still enjoy it.
This one remains a mystery for us. We are left to wonder how an artist can work so hard to create such gorgeous art and then not sign his or her work?
Let’s Play Ball!
Well, here are two very unusual art marbles. We have never seen others like them. We bought them at Main Street Antiques in Ellijay, Georgia, in 2020.
Both are an odd size at 1⅜” and each is heavy at a little less than 2 ounces. They are also cold to the touch and we have no idea what these opaque marbles are made of, but we lean toward stone.
They are not porcelaineous stoneware “water balls” like those used in historic water filtration projects. We often see these water balls in antique shops and they have a distinct band around the middle.[1] Perhaps these marbles are made of some type ball mill medium.
Baseball
While we cannot be certain what the artist used to decorate the marbles, it looks like black marker. One marble was left white and it has “Spalding” written in black in two different places. This “baseball” has black stitching. Evidently the maker was not going for authenticity.[2] (The artist should have used red stitching!)
Along with the name Spalding are the initials TCP and 94. We have been unable to learn who or what “TCP” is. Do you know? If so please use the comments tab and tell us all about it! Joanne feels that these marbles were probably made locally in Northeast Georgia.
On the Court
The “basket ball” is lightly washed a rusty brown, which will rub off on your fingers, and it has solid lines, called ribs, and the word Wilson: it is a basketball!
This time the artist did get it right: the ribs have always been black. On the other hand, all the artist wrote on the marble is “Wilson”.
We learned something about Wilson[3] that we bet you didn’t know! First, Wilson Sporting Goods was started in 1913 as Ashland Manufacturing Company. Now here’s the fun part: Ashland was a subsidiary of Swarzchild and Sulzberger meat packing! Wonder what their early basketballs were made from?
The company had a wobbly start but they branched out into gut strings for tennis rackets! Today Wilson is the official basketball for the National Basketball Association.
These are fun! And they do keep their history and mystery. For now. Let us know if you can help us unravel it.
A New Yet Antique Ship
We added this beauty to our collection in May 2012 at an antique mall in New Philadelphia, Ohio. The store was nestled on the Tuscarawas River. This ceramic marble is just smaller than 1⅝”.
The owner of the mall was quick to point out that the marble is modern. However, as you can see, the marble is crazed and it does give the impression of an old marble.
It has a hand-colored image of a three-masted square rigged clipper ship which dates to about the 1840s -50s. This type ship is called a barque. The image of the ship has a clear slip and this gives the marble a nice luster. The ship has two fore rigs and it is flying a green flag, which we cannot attribute to any country. The ship is sailing on a blue sea.
It’s Crazy
This marble looks old! In fact, one of the first things you notice is the crazing[4] which is all over the marble. The marble has to be old because crazing only occurs on old ceramics, right? Well, it does occur over time on some ceramics as the slip or glaze shrinks. So how can the marble be modern like the antique shop owner told us?
Well, actually: “Crazing generally occurs with age but there are other factors which cause immediate crazing which include:
- Temperature and humidity changes which causes the glaze to crack
- It can be caused by moisture getting into the glaze and forcing cracks in the glaze”
… “it is upon the cooling of the kiln and the contraction of the wares that cracks form. Heating and then cooling too rapidly can cause the glaze to shrink too quickly and cracks appear more readily.”[5]
A Brown or a Thornburg?
We cannot remember how the shop owner knew that the marble is modern but did not know the maker. But, of course, when we got home we started to research the marble. For us researching art marbles like this is as much fun as the original shopping! Research about marbles has even taken us to lonely graveyards in another state!
When we checked Robert Block’s Marbles Identification and Price Guide (Schiffer 2012) 5th Edition we found a marble remarkably like ours on page 157, Photograph 461. The marble in Block is attributed to Robert Brown.[6] We completed a remarkable amount of research online about Brown with little success. We also called The Marble Collectors Society of America in Trumbull, Connecticut, but they could not help us either.
Possibly A Thornburg?
Finally, online we found the article “Clyde Beal: Handcrafted marbles are a lost art” published in the Huntington, West Virginia, The Hearald Dispatch and posted 31 January 2010.[7] The article is a biography of the marble maker Tom Thornburgh[8) who lived in Huntington and who had a “Collectable Junk” shop but no studio.[9]
Thornburgh worked in both glass and ceramic. On page 2 of 2 of the Clyde Beale story Beale quotes Tom as saying: “’An old friend, Mr. Robert A. Brown, from Ironton [Ohio; some fifteen miles south of Huntington], taught me how to make marbles…Because of his willingness and patience to teach me before he passed away, his craft now lives on.’”
It’s a New Antique Clipper
It took some time and many telephone calls, but Larry did make contact with Tom. We discussed the marble, and he said that he made it! Further, he made it as a “rough out”. Brown’s marble shows rope rigging, figures onboard, details of the ship and railing, etc. Tom’s shows none of that. It is simple and straightforward. He said he made several at a time as a special order and to keep the costs down he made them very simple. He calls it a “Clipper marble” and said that both he and Mr. Brown, who taught him to make them, made Clippers.
Thornburgh Carpet Balls
Something serendipitous happened while researching this story. In 2006 we bought a 1⅛” carpet ball marble. We were perplexed that it had a high luster and yet it was crazed. After much research we decided that since it is so small it must be an “annie” or target marble for a game of carpet ball. Over the years we have continued to collect a few carpet balls. In 2006 we had not heard of either artist Thornburgh or Brown.
There is a “thumbnail” of a Thornburg marble on the front cover of Block’s 5th Ed. (2nd row and 2nd marble from the left: with the star) and a larger image of the same marble on page 165; photograph #515.[10]
Double Helix Carpet Ball
One online seller writes that “Many of Tom Thornburgh, Jr. marbles look like mini carpet balls and have the same graphic appeal.”[11]
Well, this soothes our feelings a bit, but we are still perplexed that when we first identified the Clipper Ship as a Thornburg we did not also recognize this double helix marble as a Thornburg. We have no idea why we didn’t ask Tom about it.
As you can see in the photograph, this marble is a helix. It has six intersection lines running around the hemisphere and across the poles. Look at the green lines. They are different sizes. And the green color is exactly the same as the green flag on Tom’s clipper ship!
That’s All, Folks
Collecting art marbles by unknown artists can be fun! Even if you aren’t that excited about research we think it will certainly be worth your time to collect a few glass or non-glass art marbles which are not signed and then try and find out who made them. We have explained in this post that marble research is much more than Google and AI searches.
Marble research can have all sorts of unexpected twists and turns. You may need to talk or chat online with any number of people along the way. And, as we did when writing this story, you may solve mysteries long after you have given up learning more about a marble. (12)
And finally, if you are like us and curious enough, you may find yourself wandering down a lonely lane or railroad track far from home searching for a long lost glass works or potters workshop.
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- You can see some of these water balls online at 16 Water Filtration Stones – Rocks For Water Filtration, Millstones.com (8/29/2023) The site also has their backstory, and note that these are for sale. There are a number of sites online which sale water balls. ↑
- Spalding is about 150 years old. “ The NL (Spalding) adopted Red and Black stitching in 1911 [and then stopped in 1934]. Other manufacturers also made official league balls of various stitch color as well. Green and Red was also common …. For non OAL or ONL or other official league balls I don’t know when multi-color stitch first came into use. 1901 – 1934 is commonly used as the dating for multi-color stitching, but I don’t think that necessarily applies to non-official league balls. https://www.net54baseball.com/showthread.php?t=66028 8/28/2023 ↑
- If you want to know even more about Wilson Sporting Goods then check https://tennesseeencyclopedia.net/entries/wilson-sporting-goods/ 8/29/2023 ↑
- “Crazing in Pottery Glaze: Why It Happens And How To Avoid It”. @ https://www.soulceramics.com/pages/crazing-pottery-glaze 9/1/2023↑
- “Crazing in Pottery Glaze: Why It Happens And How To Avoid It” ↑
- You might want to check out the thread “Robert Brown And His Brownie Marbles”, which does include a post by Bob (Robert) Block and a number of nice photographs. @ https://marbleconnection.com/topic/18016-robert-brown-and-his-brownie-marbles/ 9/1/2023↑
- https://www.herald-dispatch.com/news/recent_news/clyde-beal-handcrafted-marbles-are-a-lost-art/article_21238ca7-670e-5913-a564-2dcea46e88e7.html 9/1/2023 ↑
- Check the very informative threads @https://marbleconnection.com/topic/30259-tom-thornburgh/9/3/2023 ↑
- Regrettably, while researching this story we learned that Tom died on May 8th 2022. ↑
- There is a photograph of 99 Thornburgh marbles at Worthpoint https://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/marbles-tom-thornburgh-1696205004 (9/4/2023). There are carpet balls on this website including at least one like ours with the double helix.↑
- https://www.pinterest.com/pin/383087512053805476/ 9/4/2023 ↑
- There is more to read in this magazine about artist made marbles.
