From 1880 to 1915 glass marbles were manufactured in the US by machine for the first time – or at least they were machine manufactured in part. A part of the process was still done by hand and the marbles made in this way are known as Transitional Marbles. They represent a bridge between manmade and machine manufactured marbles. The machine was almost like a lathe with molten glass, and the colors were swirled in by hand.

The swirled pattern ends on the marble’s surface in what is known as a pontil. Transitional marbles are often identified by their type of pontil – if they show. A pontil that is “regular” looks like its handmade counterpart and is quite rare. “Melted,” “pinch,” and “crease” pontils are common while “pinpoint” and “fold” pontils are extremely rare.

The best-known companies to have produced transitionals were the Navarre Glass Company and M. F. Christensen & Son Company. It is extremely rare to come across any marbles in their original packaging, making it hard track the origin of a transitional.

Shown is a non-pontil transitional marble.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 4th, 2008 at 12:09 pm and is filed under Articles, Blog Entry, Marbles, Toys, Dolls, Games and Puzzles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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