This week the topic of the Cee’s Black and White Challenge is Made by Humans.

This week was another family affair to find something Human Made. Right there on the edge of our dinning room is this decorative jar holding our old marble collection. The two of us posed and played with them.

This made me want to find out if we had something valuable not just in our hearts but also cash in the hand.  To my surprise I found Marbles are a big collectible item.  Here is how a lot are made which shows these little gems are truly works of art.

Glass marbles, the most common version of the object today, only came into existence relatively recently in the history of the object. It is debated whether they originated in Venice, where glass blowing had become a well-developed industry since the ninth century, or back in Germany. Historians point to 1846 as the invention of marbelschere (marble scissors) by a glass factory employee in Germany. This tool resembled a pair of tongs with a small cup on one end and a slicing device on the other. A molten glass rod would be forcefully inserted into the cup, and the worker would then twist the cup, which would help form the sphere of the marble. Squeezing the tongs shut sliced off the rest of the glass. Such marbles can be identified by their pontil marks, the two tiny tags at each end of the sphere where the cooling glass was severed from the rest of the rod. The objects were further cooled inside a wooden barrel and then taken up with an iron spoon and inserted into an annealing oven, a process which yielded a tougher piece of Marbles process which yielded a tougher piece of glass not likely to break or become brittle.

Read more: http://www.madehow.com/Volume-2/Marbles.html#ixzz5fppDebiM

Here are a couple other poses of our valentine heart jar marble collection.

Want more of Cee’s Black and White Photo Challenge or maybe want to join in the fun?  Here is the link for your viewing pleasure.   Cee’s Black & White Photo Challenge – Made by Human