Research at the MAC Lab

We spent the day at Jefferson Patterson Park and Museum to do some research on artifacts we have been finding. After a morning of touring the facilities, we worked in the research library. Katharine worked with tobacco pipe bowls and stems, and discovered that one of the pipe fragments we have is a French pipe made by the Noel brothers out of Lyon, France sometime between 1808 and 1920. Another one of the stems seemed to have an eighteenth century British design.

Allison returned to studying her beloved makers' marks. She had six marks to work with, but unfortunately none could be identified because they were too fragmentary. There was enough present of two marks that give us a rough date range of about 100 years on them.

Magen had a chance to sit down and research marbles . The collection contains two glass marbles and eight ceramic marbles. One of the glass marbles is red, white and blue with rectanglular ribbons of color and may have been manufactured by Vitro marbles in Parkersburg West Virginia. This marble started beginning manufactured in the late 1920's and stopped being manufactured in the mid-1950's. Also the collection contains a spattered crockery marble that began being manufactured in 1890 and was only manufactured for a short time. The collection also contains three marbles made from natural clay. The final two marbles are possible china marbles. China marbles were manufactured in Germany beginning in the last part of the eighteenth century (Baumann 2004).

Tomorrow excavations will continue at the Indian King area . We would like to thank Kelly Copper for taking us on a tour of Jefferson Patterson park.

Paul Baumann 2004 kp books 4th Collecting Antique Marbles Identification and Price Guide