BONNER SPRINGS – Marble games have been around for a long time.
And while they may seem a bit old-fashioned compared to today’s modern video games, there’s a community of collectors, artists – and kids – who are keeping marbles alive.
There’s even a place in Kansas where you can choose from hundreds of styles of marbles and watch them being made.
It’s around 10:30 on a Saturday morning and the small front room at Moon Marble Company in Bonner Springs is already getting crowded. Families with young children, a few teens and a few seniors are all checking out the merchandise: walls filled with marbles.
Different colors, different sizes. You can buy them one at a time or select several marbles to fill a tube or a jar.
These marbles are machine made and probably look like the ones you’ve seen before. But this front area is just part of the company’s large, rambling building. There’s a middle room filled with vintage board games, kitschy gifts and jewelry. And handmade marbles.
“We carry marbles from artists all over the country, " said Linda Sproules, co-owner of Moon Marble Company.
She heads to a back room where the marble-making demonstrations take place.
There we find Bruce Breslow, co-owner of the business and a marble craftsman. As people start to fill up the metal bleachers, he gets his equipment ready.
There are bowls for holding bits of glass, long rods of colored glass, a couple of cameras pointed at his hands and workspace, with flat screens overhead. And – most importantly – a blow torch.
“This is called the Mirage torch,” Breslow said, “and it's made by a company called … Glass Torch Technologies, and we're using propane and oxygen for our fuel.”
The torch is on low right now. Breslow has been making tiny marbles he calls wee-wees. But as he starts building a large marble, he cranks up the heat, and explains his protective gear.
“These are called didymium glasses. They're purple lenses,” he said. “The glasses I'm wearing? These are called trifocals.
“I think I look cool,” he said as the audience laughed.
Breslow reminds people to not look at the flame for too long and then gets ready to turn up the torch.
“Going to turn that up a bit, and that makes a real nice hot flame,” he said.
Breslow starts with some black glass and gradually adds other colors. The marble slowly goes from sticky squiggles of glass into a sphere, a swirl of colors…the original black with green, blue, yellow and white.
Eventually, the demonstration wraps up. Some of the crowd lingers and Breslow answers questions about the art of crafting marbles and the hobby of collecting them. He said he’s been making marbles for about 30 years. Before that, he was a wood craftsman.
The favorite part of the job? The kids, he said.
“My hope is that they might think about making something with their hands,” he said.
“My kids are all computer experts, and they all work. They all have good jobs, and they're on the computer all day. But I think that we need to stress craft to our children, and that you can make a living doing a craft.”
And as he gets a drink and starts to get his tools together, there’s another group lining up to come in and watch him make more marbles.
