Losing Their Marbles Over Clam Broths, Onion Skins, End-O-Days, and Swirls

Losing their marbles over clam broths, onion skins, end-o-days and swirls

By Constance Crump

How’s your marble consciousness?

Bet you haven’t even noticed any of those mementos of the playground lately, unless you came across grandpa’s stash bag when you were cleaning the attic.

But two area collectors are well on their way to going bananas over the glass goodies, some of which can be almost as big as apples.

Don Taylor and Dick Marshall have big marbles numbered in the dozens and measure smaller specimens in gallons. They aren’t anywhere near capacity though. Both are still on the upward trend of their acquisition curve and search feverishly for the next prize whenever they get the chance.

A BIG MARBLE is anything bigger than a conventional machine made post-World War II type like the thousands rolling around in kitchen junk drawers all over Ann Arbor. Big can mean anything up to two-and-a-half inches in diameter or even larger.

Size is only one of the criteria a collector judges marbles on, however. Condition, type and coloration can be equally important in judging desirability. Enthusiasts Taylor and Marshall point to Greeks and Romans as the source of their favorite collectible. Although neither of them has a sample that old, marbles were made then and haven’t really changed that much since.

Taylor and Marshall concentrate on the golden age of marblehood, 1840 to 1920, when the handmade marble was queen and factories in Europe and the U.S. turned out swirls, clam broths, onion skins and end-o-days in profusion.

The variety is amazing and your color “taste buds” can get a real zing from inspecting a good collection.

TAYLOR SAYS, BESIDES aesthetics, there are a lot of advantages to collecting marbles. They’re small, so even a sizable collection doesn’t take up much room; portable, so you can carry your favorite fetish object around and tell all your friends about your latest find with ease; and best of all, there’s so little written about them, and they were such a common object that bargains abound. Unlike other, larger fine antiques, no book values exist for marbles, so they tend to be overpriced or underpriced.

It’s the latter market condition that attracts Taylor. Ten cents is his favorite price, but both he and Marshall have paid considerably more for highlights of their respective collections and they report that at the national marble meet, held recently in Iowa, asking prices soared as high as $800 for a figure of a man on a stump imprisoned in green glass. An equally large, finely preserved bird in blue glass was purchased by another marble maniac at the meet for $10. Marshall reports that there were few serious inquiries about the $800 marble.

Figures are among the most highly prized types. Sulphides, almost invariably white bisque figures or numbers in clear glass, are sought after and command the highest asking prices. They can be as simple as 1, 2, 3 or feature Jenny Lind (the top sulphide figure) or a lizard on a rock. Eagles, bears and elephants are common. Both Marshall and Taylor have marbles featuring Jesus on the cross.

SWIRLS ARE PROBABLY the most available type. Bands of color, net cores and size make the big difference between swirls. They also tend to be in the worst condition, since most marbles now being collected had a working life on the playground before making into the big league of the display case.

Taylor, who restores sick marbles for his own and other collections, sees his work as making marbles available for appreciation. A badly chipped marble has nowhere to go but up, he says, although poor condition is a sure sign that “the last ten owners really liked it too.”

Marshall, in real life a math professor at Eastern Michigan University, became interested in marbles as an antidote to boredom when shopping with an antiquing parent as a youngster. Both Marshall and Taylor said that their early interest in marbles suffered a hiatus in adolescence but revived for both when they were in their early twenties. They became acquainted through their mutual marble mania and now continue their avid search for more at antique shows and shops nationwide, but mainly in the Midwest.

Taylor regrets that he frittered away early prizes like his dad’s bag of swirls and cats’ eyes before marbles entered his consciousness in a big way as anything but a toy.

Marshall still has his first collectible marble, a sulphide he bought for $1.

EARLY IN HIS adult collecting phase, a friendly dealer convinced Marshall to catalog his collection. His method is an archivist’s dream. Each round nugget is labeled with year and a purchase number, the wheres, whens and how muchs recorded next to the number along with a description. Taylor has a similar, less elaborate method.

Lest you think only the two Ann Arborites take this seriously, the Marble Collectors Society of America is soliciting contributions of unusual and rare marbles for the Smithsonian collection in Washington, D.C. Enthusiasts gather in June every year. They’re a group ranging in age from eight to 78, all eager to compare clam broths and Indian swirls, goldstones and onionskins.

A swapper’s newsletter called Marble Mania also makes a regular appearance in mailboxes across the country bandying such goodies as goldstones, featuring bands of sparkling copper aventurine, often in colored glass. Or mica chips embedded in glass. Or china marbles, either porcelain, glazed or bisque, and “Benningtons” (not from Bennington at all, supposedly, but made by Rockingham Pottery in West Virginia). (The Akro Agate Co., well known to collectors for their Depression era dishes, got their start in marbles and their logo features a crow with a marble in his beak and one clutched in each claw.)

TAYLOR AND MARSHALL encourage anyone interested to find out as much as they can about marbles. Beginners should try for an example of each type, and learn to identify them. Condition is important, too. They recommend passing up chipped or otherwise defaced marbles at least at the start.

Some contemporary glassmakers continue to manufacture old style marbles, especially swirls. To an expert, though, these could not be mistaken for a vintage prize. One aspect of marble collecting that entrances is that sources can’t really be identified, so the only sure thing about a particular marble is your response.

And by the way, if you have a clown sulphide with painted hat and features, or a pedigreed, handmade swirl with distinct pontils (pointed ends) and snip marks, where the scissors cut it free, lurking in your desk, polish it up, they suggest. It could be antique and notable.

Local collectors, Don Taylor, left, and Dick Marshall relish the vagaries of the globular glass world. Below, Marshall holds two examples of sulfides which command the highest prices on the marble market

News Photos by Robert Chase