It’s hard to believe that you had to use an outside toilet not so very long ago. It’s even harder to believe that anyone would go digging around in the accumulated “stuff” decades later to find a privy marble! You Dug It Up Where? was one of our most popular emagazine stories.
This old privy marble has a story. The dealer we bought it from told us that he found it in the privy while cleaning up the family farmstead, which dates back to the post Civil War era in Augusta, Ga.
You may not recognize this as a marble! It was produced late in the period when china marbles were quickly and crudely made. Workers decided that just a line or two of color was enough decoration.
Compare its appearance to brightly colored glass marbles, which would soon revolutionize the marble industry.
Later on, glass marbles would join the clays in the muck. Not only were these accidentally lost from pockets while seated on the privy, but little boys were notorious for throwing their rivals’ marbles down the hole.
You can add this piece of marble history to your collection. It’s clean now, but imagine the “show and tell” stories you can spin out of this one! Visit our store to purchase:
