A large variety of Gems, Marbles, polished Rocks, Seashell in different sizes and packing are offered by Zimax as a glass vases wholesale company.

 For several thousand years, marbles have been widely used as toys. Marbles made of stone or clay has been found alongside the remains of Egyptian children. Ancient art has depicted children and adults enjoying games with marbles, but their popularity waned rapidly in the second half of the 20^th century.

 The first ornamental glass marbles have been credited to the Venetians, but they did little to promote these for games. It was a German, Elias Greiner, who is recognized as the first manufacturer to mass-produce toy glass marble. In 1849, he received a patent from the Bavarian government for a device known as marble shears. It was designed from a similar tool his stepbrother used to make animal eyes for taxidermy.

 Soon his affordable, imitation agate marbles were in use all over Europe and imported into the United States. Some were shipped to England for use as stoppers in Codd-style soda bottles.

 By the late 1880s, clay marbles being mass-produced in the United States. Several companies located in the Akron, Ohio area were making the common clay spheres nicknamed “commies” one of the original marble producers, Sam Dyke, hired glass expert James Leighton to make the bold leap into glass marbles in November of 1890. Dyke established the first production system for American made glass marbles. By 1891, he had renamed his business, the American marble and toy Manufacturing Company. While Leighton was credited with a patent for a hand tool to create marbles, it was the more dramatic invention by Akron’s Martin Christensen that truly revolutionized modern marble production. His machine was comprised of two edge-to-edge wheels with concave outer rims. A small gather of molten glass was placed between the two wheels as they were spinning in opposite directions. A perfectly round marble was then rapidly formed between the two wheels he called “roller” Christensen filed a patent in 1902 for the innovative mechanical device and confidently started his own company (M.F. Christensen & Son) a year later. His patent was granted in 1905, and he successfully ran his company for 14 years.

 Unfortunately, Christensen’s bookkeeper, Horace Hill, left with some company money to join a firm in 1913 that ultimately became the most well-known marble producer of the 20^th century “Akro Agate” the company was started in Akron in 1910 and coined the slogan, “shoot Straight as A KRO Flies” along a trademarked black crow inside the letter “A.” Hill moved Akro Agate to West Virginia in 1914, repaid his debt to Christensen in 1915 and then died a year later. Akro Agate went on to dominate the marble market for almost 35 years, closing in 1951. Glass vases wholesale offer a large selection of gorgeous marbles.