Meet a man who quit his job to make marbles

Originally published at: Meet a man who quit his job to make marbles | Boing Boing

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Neat! I heard this story on Marketplace but hadn’t seen any of the images. Lovely!

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Quitting some jobs have caused me to generate some of the marbles I’d lost on the job, but not as tangibly as this artisan. This is really cool.

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Venetian glass makers… eat your heart out.

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Question: Does he make more per hour than he did at Home Depot? Or is it the 60-70 hour weeks that are making the difference?

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If I were younger, I would’ve tried the same route as this young man. He does beautiful work!

I watched an artist whip out a beautiful hand-blown glass salmon in roughly two hours. The fish needs to cool down in a kiln, which takes several hours. He was a super interesting, friendly, and willing to share secrets. This is a picture of his stuff:

He sells them for roughly $900. If I only I had some extra money because I really, really want one.

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I did buy another artist’s 1.25" marble for $70 and it’s gorgeous.

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I have no idea, but he was miserable at Home Depot, and now he’s doing something that he loves, that, while time consuming and taxing, doesn’t much feel like work to him, and that has value too, even though it’s probably hard to put a number on.

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My ergonomist senses are tingling with that shoulder pain from repetition. Working 60-70 hours and developing that kind of injury in a year? He’s working for himself, but it sounds like he’s neglecting himself the way a bad employer would.

It’s not really the dream to drop out, work for yourself, and put yourself on disability by ignoring your own health and safety.

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Those are great objets d’art but they’re not marbles, not being, you know, spherical.

At least I don’t think so? Unless there’s a marble collectors community who would define it differently.

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People will pay that much for a marble?

Who has $240 to spend on a single marble?

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Cool! I’ve been following faroutfacets on Instagram but had never read his story before this.

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Bros who think they’re NFTs.

Marbellous.

I suspect that the valuation makes more sense from the ‘art piece’ perspective than the ‘marble’ perspective. (though, apparently some rarer antiques are more expensive than I would have expected, if in good condition)

$240 for an art piece that catches your fancy isn’t for everyone; but it’s a pretty modest art buy all told(especially since storage and display requirements are substantially less demanding than for art that is bulky or light-sensitive or whatnot).

If you just need some inhabitants for your marble maze it’s likely a poor choice; but that’s not really the target market.

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