Antiques Column:Â Â Mists that createÂ stunning marblesÂ

Everyone loves a marble. They are lovely little artistic glass balls brimming withnostalgia.

Monday, 7th January 2019, 11:45 am
Updated Wednesday, 9th January 2019, 12:41 pm
Vintage marbles

Marbles of the Victorian glass variety are very popular with collectors, particularly the German handmade ones produced from the 1860s until the outbreak of the First World War.

The handmade marbles can be easily identified by their pontil mark; a slightly rough area where the marble was removed from the pontil rod.

The German swirls were the most common handmade marble but within this category there are five different types; the latticino core as the name suggests with a lattice core, the solid core which was either cylindrical or ridged, the divided core which had multiple strands in the middle, the ribbon core which was usually a single ribbon but could be two and finally the complex core so named because it used more than one technique within a single marble.

What makes the area of marble collecting so interesting is that within these five types of swirls there lie other categories and sub-types.

For example, there are mists which are created by overlaying colours near the surface of the marble, mica which denotes marbles with designs incorporating silver flakes, or onionskin where the marble typically has a white opaque layer covered with panels of colour.

One very desirable subcategory is Lutz marbles, those with goldstone decoration; flecks of gold within their designs made from ground copper. Marbles using this technique weren't produced until the early 1900s.

Value often lies in complex, intricate and symmetrical designs as well as bright, multicoloured marbles, with certain colours such as blue and red more popular due to their rarity.