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The Christensen Agate Company 1925-1931 The Christensen Agate Company was started in 1925 in Payne, Ohio, by a number of Akron business men and a machine inventor from Pittsburgh. The company chose Payne, Ohio for its rich reserves of newly discovered natural gas. The company name is similar to the former M.F. Christensen & Son Company, but these two companies have no direct connection.
A very colorful marble made by the Christensen Agate Company. What really set this company apart from any other marble company that ever existed was the use of exotic glass colors. This trait is credited to a man named Arnold Fiedler. Mr. Fiedler was an expert glass chemist from the "old world." He knew how to make hundred's of different compatible glass colors. Compatibility is very important because it is what keeps an item made out of glass from cracking apart because of differential internal stresses.
A rare box of 'Guinea' marbles made by the Christensen Agate Company while in Cambridge, Ohio. This company would move to a new location in 1927; the city of Cambridge, Ohio. The city of Cambridge was offering large sums of money to lure new businesses into town, and was able to supply this company with an influx of needed capital. This capital was needed because there was allot of experimenting going on with color blending and automation, work which was cutting edge for the time and still is today. If there was ever an apex in toy marble manufacturing, it happened at the Christensen Agate Company. The first truly automated machine made marbles were made by this company through the use of gob feeders.
The factory building in Cambridge, Ohio. Date and photographer unknown.
The factory would meet its demise with the crash of the stock market and the start of the Great Depression. To the men that had this company, it was basically a side line interest, it was the first thing they 'dumped' when times became lean. We only wonder what else this company would have come up with if it were not for this unfortunate chapter in American history.
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