These are the marbles that started it all, the first art glass marbles to ever be sold in the US, back in 1975 at the Marin County Renaissance Faire in California just a ways north of San Francisco! Above just about everything else, THESE are the marbles that every art glass marble collection needs at least one of!! Ro had made his first marbles back in '73, and he had the idea that maybe they could sell these things, but didn't know where, since they were too simple for galleries and too expensive for general craft fairs.....until, HELLOOOO Ren Faire! Ro drove the 250 miles south from Humboldt to Marin County, loaded down in his '49 truck, to join Dick (Richard) Marquis and build their makeshift furnace at the Faire so they could demonstrate their new-fangled techniques for making little art glass marbles, initially patterned after the early German handmades, which were then taken to new heights with their own special embellishments. Just so you can picture it, they literally lived in their booth (2 stories with a kitchen) from Friday thru Sunday night for 6 weekends straight. Their little makeshift glass furnace ran off of a propane tank and had two openings on either side, one for the left-handed Ro and the other side for Dick and his right-handedness. They took shifts making the little marbles from their cane, a couple hours at a time, while the other would sell their little jewels for a few bucks apiece to the intrigued crowds who watched. If it's got a left hand twist then Ro made it and if it's right then of course it was Dick (these 10 marbles here are all lefties from Ro). They went by the name ‘Elgin and Carrara’ (Dick's idea) and they had a motto ‘Round like the World' (Ro's idea). Very few got the humor in the 'Elgin and Carrara' thing (Google it like I did, ha ha) but 'Round like the world' was a big hit. They were the first people to ever have a live flame at a Ren Faire because of the extreme fire danger in the hot California summer.

Who knew these little spherical glass gems would go on to start a whole new glass movement that would spawn some of the most beautiful and fascinating glass work the world has seen, with a whole world of Contemporary Art Glass Marbles opening up to us over the next 50 years, as inspired glass artists molded and melted their own amazing visions into their own spheres.

The initial goal of Ro and Dick was to mimic the cane style and tech of the early German hand-made cane twist marbles, which were made back in the early 20th century in Germany as fancier marbles for wealthier German children to play with. They went on to come up with some of their own unique spins and twists on the techniques, with so many of their design ideas later used by just about every other cane glass marble artist out there and they're still all used today. Even though these marbles weren't made with the playground in mind, they are still a bit rougher than the clean look of modern marbles, since of course the guys didn't really have high art in mind when they made them, and were going for the German hand-made look. Those German marbles typically have a pontil, or rough spot on the bottom where the marble was pulled off the cane, and thus these Ren Faire marbles have that feature as well. Also, keep in mind that these are smaller marbles, and thus my larger pictures amplify all of the rough spots in the glass, whereas in hand it's much harder to see all of those little details with the naked eye, and thus you mainly see the typical marble beauty displayed.