5 comments about The Encyclopedia of Modern Marbles, Spheres, & Orbs.

1. A perfect book for the marble collector, this is the kind of book that can be read a hundred times and learn something new about the marble collectors world. Beautiful pictures and it shows that a lot of work went in to this book! Looking forward to more books by Mark Block!



2. While Block's first coffee table book on the subject of contemporary marbles was a fine piece of work, his second book is not, and anybody who says it is is either blind or crazy or a homer. Marble collectors love to see nice pictures of beautiful marbles, and while there are indeed LOTS of marble pictures in this book to look at, the vast majority of them are of such poor quality that it actually becomes a painful process to keep flipping the pages to see more of them. But that's not the worst part of the book. More egregious than the photography is the organization of the book. It is a haphazard mess of marbles, with no clear sense of how they are grouped and why. It actually starts out as if it's going somewhere, but then completely falls apart, as if the author was being whipped while on a chain gang in order to get the book finished by some crazy deadline. It ended up being maddening to flip through, since marbles were thrown together in bizarre ways that just leave you frustrated.
   
   In summary, save your money and find places online instead where you can find some true quality pictures of marbles with MUCH better stories and descriptions behind them. Hopefully somebody else comes out with a better book to redeem the marble community from the pain of this one.



3. This book is clearly one of only two that specialize in the hot collectible of contemporary marbles. Mark Block is the reknown and acknowledged expert in the field. This is easily seen in the in-depth research he has done, the cooperation he received from the Corning Museum of Glass, and all of the beautiful works that were incorporated into this exciting volume. I only hope that future books by Mark Block will meet or exceed his own expectations. If they do, the glass community will be all the better for it. He is truly Mr. Ambassador when it comes to contemporary marbles and related art glass.



4. For those of you who aren't aware Mark Block was convicted of a felony for screwing around with marble artist creations. He was also charged with faking marks on marbles to increase value although these were dropped as part of a plea deal. So my question is what publisher in their right mind releases a book supposedly by an expert who has a felony conviction specifically related to the subject he is an expert in? Obviously not a very conscientious publisher. Let me be the first to publicly state that I will boycott all Schiffer books until they get this criminal off their roster -- and no this doesn't apply to the rest of the Blocks. For those of you who want to support criminal behavior and want to buy this book beware the pictures aren't good, each one has a reflection on it, and the marbles in the book are certainly not first quality. By the way Mark, how many of the marbles in the book that were given as "donations" actually were "mistakenly" sold by you or your brother? Oh, I'm sorry you can't sell marbles - that's against your probation isn't it?



5. I haven't been collecting art glass marbles all that long, but I do know a beautiful book when I see one. The pictures are fantastic, clear and cover every possible type of handmade marble. I haven't had time to read the entire book, but I have paged through it several times just to marvel at the photography. What I have read seems to be concise and well written. I'm sure that I will find it to be a valuable source of reference for years to come.
   
   There's only one problem... every page shows a different type of marble that I need to add to my collection... this could get expensive!

No comments about Antique Glass End-Of-Day Marbles.

No comments about The Elgin Marbles, romanticism & the waning of 'ideal beauty'.: An article from: Daedalus.

No comments about London's Country House Collections: Kenwood, Chiswick, Marble Hill, Ranger's House.

No comments about Morphy Auctions: Fall Sale 2004.

2 comments about Marbles Beyond Glass.

1. Collecting the full spectrum of non-glass marbles is collecting the history of toy marbles. It should have been impossible to produce a book on non-glass marbles without mentioning details of their history and production, but this has now been accomplished, unfortunately.
   The hundreds of individual marble pictures vary greatly in interest. Many are redundant and the inferior pictures detract from the few excellent examples illustrated.
   Antique agate marbles are interspersed with modern mineral marbles.There is very little or nothing mentioned of wooden, hollow brass, limestone, alabaster, stoneware, sewer-tile or ivory toy marbles.
   Any ceramic marble coated with a colored glaze is called a "bennington", which is not helpful.
   There is no mention of the largest US agate marble factory which cut and ground Mexican onyx in the 1920s and 1930 in Los Angeles, California.
   No contemporary marble makers are named, although their marbles are illustrated profusely.
   No distinction is made between earthen ware, red ware, stone ware (very old German as well as 100 year old Akron), yellow ware (generally from the US) white ware or porcelain (usually German).
   Any marble with surface lines is arbitrarily called "line pottery" or "line crockery" or "lined china".
   Unfortunately, since rarity does not greatly influence price (value) amongst many ordinary ceramic toy marbles, it appears there was no incentive for the author to accurately categorize them.
   I'm not looking for a treatise on ceramics, but at a list price of $50, some attempt should have been made to progress from the folksy and sloppy jargon of the past to well established classification used by ceramic collectors. Such impaired communication inhibits progress; ceramic marble collectors will have to wait for a better book, which is long overdue.



2. This book is mostly a collection of pictures of individual marbles, seven to a page, supposedly marketed as an identification and price guide. It turns out to be a terrible waste of time and money for everyone.
   Promulgation of confusing and inaccurate terminology should have ceased long ago, with the publication of more factual marble books such as Gartley and Carskadden's "Colonial Period and Early 18th Century Children's Toy Marbles" and Paul Baumann's "Collecting Antique Marbles".
   There is a minimum of text, probably because of a scarcity of knowledge on the author's part. An obvious lack of appreciation of the origins and manufacturing techniques of these marbles creates some major errors and omissions. For example, a variety of distinctly different marbles are lumped together as either "lined pottery" or "lined crockery" or both. Painted clay marbles, variegated porcelain marbles as well as decorated American stoneware marbles are all called "lined pottery". The same photograph is sometimes repeatedly used with a different caption. The term "sponge ware" is used so frequently and inaccurately as to be meaningless. No mention is made of the ubiquitous limestone marble, nor the uncommon marble cut and ground from red veined marble, which probably gave toy marbles their name. No distinction is made between modern machine ground, semi-precious stone marbles, (cheaper by the pound at rock shops) and expensive hand cut German agates from the 19th century. We don't need seven individual pictures of blue "Bennington" marbles (a misnomer by the way) on a single page! Cane handles are lumped together with distinctly different painted china marbles, and the artists responsible for modern painted china marbles are not acknowledged. There is not a single reference to any of the numerous and often inaccurate statements, and the short bibliography is useless. A lack of an index is not surprising, as I doubt the author could ever come up with one, given the disorganization of the book. This is a book any experienced collector would find useless and to which no new collector should ever be exposed.

No comments about Marble Clocks (Shire Library).

No comments about Price Guide to 2000 Winchester and Marble's Hardware Collectibles.

No comments about The Encyclopedia Of Collectibles Lalique to Marbles.

No comments about Encyclopedia of Collectibles: Lalique to Marbles.