Mistakes - Burying Our S**T

Mistakes, we all make them, especially when doing something for the first time; marble manufacturers were no exception. During the loosely regulated Laissez Faire period of American industry marble manufacturers would commonly ditch their mistakes in the ground or in a creek. Millions of mibs were seeded across the West Virginia topography, lying dormant for decades awaiting adventurous marble seekers and their shovels.

Marbles were discarded by manufacturers for a variety of reasons: misshapen spheres, anneal cracks, bad color batches, and much more. Many of the employees would also run experimental colors and glass during lunch and other breaks, a lot of the time these experiments were unsuccessful and thrown out the back door. Some manufacturers also encountered problems with overproduction, they did not want to shut down machines during normal operating hours and thus would sometimes build a large stock without an equal demand in orders. It is known that some of these manufacturers just dumped their stock to make room for new mibs. Lucky us!

For these reasons, many marble collectors make the pilgrimage to West Virginia to sink their own shovels in the earth. It is quite remarkable how common marbles and other discarded glass products are within the West Virginian soil. Even a novice hunter can strike “gold” near any creek, as many of the manufacturers set up near a water source for use in production - and the creek’s would naturally wash mibs down current, depositing them throughout West Virginian banks.

More studious collectors have traced back the exact locations of many marble manufacturers, allowing them to excavate like organized archaeologists. Over the years collector’s have organized for group “digs”, gathering their knowledge and resources to un-earth thousands of mibs and the history with them. Many new color and style variants are discovered at these digs, spurring excitement across the site - as if a new chamber was found in the Great Pyramid.

We’ve all buried our mistakes at some point, typically with a sense of shame, but we never consider them being dug up almost 100 years later to be admired and cherished.