“ANTIQUE MARBLE STUDY” 16 x 60 inch watercolor painting

Catching the reflections in glass is perhaps one of the more difficult things that I do in watercolor painting.  This painting uses the transparent watercolor technique where the lighter tones are influenced by the white paper showing through underneath.  That means that the paper also forms the “whites” in the painting.  There are a few opaques, but for the most part the painting is executed using traditional transparent watercolor technique.

These are all marbles from my own collection.  The larger marbles are German hand made marbles from the late 1800’s and the beginning of the 20th century.  These victorian marbles were hand blown by master craftsmen in a time when the qualities of superior craftsmanship far outweighed the benefits of mass production.   Names like onion skins, swirls and St. Josephs describe some of the various types shown.  The big onion skin marble is better than two inches in diameter.  The clear glass marbles with either numbers or animals in the centers are called sulphide marbles.   The smallest marbles in the foreground are American machine made marbles from the 1930’s or later.

I grew up in the 1950’s when boys and girls still played with marbles.  There was a time when my bag of marbles accompanied me everywhere that I went.  The first toys of memory were my mother’s marbles that she played with as a child.  Today, such simple pieces of glass can be worth a pretty penny and are highly collectable by those in the know.  Not many survived in mint condition.  And a good deal of those that did, were lost along the way and yet to be found.

Some interesting sites to visit about marbles:  www.akronmarbles.com Akron Marbles is an interesting site describing the history of marble making in the United States.  Moon Marbles is a modern day marble maker located outside Kansas City, in Bonner Springs, Kansas.  It is worth a visit in person on demonstration day when one can still see marbles made by hand.