About Me

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No Fixed Abode, Home Counties, United Kingdom
I’m a 60-year-old Aspergic gardening CAD-Monkey. Sardonic, cynical and with the political leanings of a social reformer, I’m also a toy and model figure collector, particularly interested in the history of plastics and plastic toys. Other interests are history, current affairs, modern art, and architecture, gardening and natural history. I love plain chocolate, fireworks and trees, but I don’t hug them, I do hug kittens. I hate ignorance, when it can be avoided, so I hate the 'educational' establishment and pity the millions they’ve failed with teaching-to-test and rote 'learning' and I hate the short-sighted stupidity of the entire ruling/industrial elite, with their planet destroying fascism and added “buy-one-get-one-free”. Likewise, I also have no time for fools and little time for the false crap we're all supposed to pretend we haven't noticed, or the games we're supposed to play. I will 'bite the hand that feeds', to remind it why it feeds.

Sunday, April 16, 2017

P is for Part Two - More Marble Sample Eggs



As well as the tourist 'standard' size eggs, you also find smaller ones (definitely knocked-up from off-cuts or chips off larger projects), which tend to be 'any old size', so long as they can be finnished in an egg shape, and here's a few with a couple of glass eggs!

Three medium sized eggs, I love the green and white one, it really does look like a slightly squashed planet, while the white one is - presumably - a piece of top-notch alabaster marble? I don't know; just guessing again!

These are real tiny ones; the biggest may be 'blood agate'? The middle one looks like a real egg! The smallest is so small I don't know why anyone bothered with the effort of making it . . . apprentice piece maybe? Hosepipe O-rings make great display stands for these little'uns.

Four of the above in their section of the display cabinet, along with three actual marble marbles, originally known as 'Taws' they are much prized in the world of marble playing for use as a 'shooter' or shooting-marble, some being made of semi-precious stone.

The reason I had hoped to start these posts on Friday is because Good Friday is an important day in the marble player's calendar, but most of the significance is not good - various clubs allow for the confiscation of any marbles played after certain times on Good Friday, usually 12-noon.

Also a small, clear, glass-egg paperweight is to be seen (bottom left), the plinth is also glass, but as black as the devils cloak!

This is also glass, I can't remember the name of it and Google won't help while I'm writing this away from the Internet, but it's a special type of Victorian glass made with arsenic (probably pretty dangerous - or even deadly - for the makers), which produces this smoked, faux opal effect. It is also a paperweight with a flat portion to sit on.

What passes for a pontil-mark hints darkly at the lethality of the material used. The little blackened 'V' looking like something you might find on a wizard's forehead!

Another perfect sphere, this one is too big for a playable marble; I suspect, so more of a decorative item, and also looking very planet-like.

2 comments:

Paul´s Bods said...

The victorian egg..the glass is called opalescent glass ..made using Arsenic and er??..some other additive.
I´ll get back to on your mail

Hugh Walter said...

Call me a coward but it got a quick polish with a damp cloth and I made sure I didn't touch it!

H