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Brian Bowden | profile | all galleries >> Glass ORBits - Contemporary Art Glass Marbles and Other Art Glass For Sale! >> Mark Matthews Marbles For Sale >> #97: "Historical Checkers" Size: 2.11" Price: $2,200 tree view | thumbnails | slideshow

#97: "Historical Checkers" Size: 2.11" Price: $2,200


I know the price tag on this marble won't make sense to many of you, so let me explain, ha ha. Mark is famous for several things, and this marble has most of those things wrapped up in it. Mark is one of the earliest art glass marble artists the world has known, and this marble is one of the earliest marbles he created. But not only that, it is a precursor and design template for his most famous line of marbles - the Geometrics, which are world renown for their amazing designs. For this checkerboard style marble, Mark used black powdered glass which he poured out into the checkerboard pattern, and then rolled up onto the white base of the marble. It was a painstaking and very tricky process, and the result is really cool....but of course not nearly as sweet as the designs he would come up with in the future using the newer graal technique, which involved sand blasting away portions of one layer of glass using an applied pattern. This marble was the genesis of that awesome idea though, and as such, along with the earliness of it, is one of the most historic marbles you'll ever find in the art glass marble world! It is a SERIOUS piece of marble history, and while it may not appeal to all collectors, serious Matthews collectors will absolutely want to have this amazing marble in their collection. This is the historical genesis of a glass master! I don't know the exact year this was made, but it would be somewhere in the late 80's. Signed with a circled 'MM' (Mark's earliest signature).






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