If you let him look into your eyes, Jerry Maske can find your marble.

No, he’s not looking for your lost marble (or marbles, as the case may be). He’s looking for the right marble – that glistening orb of glass with a pinwheel of candy pink or iridescent purple inside that reflects your personality.

For Nick Silvestrone, 13, of Lamoine, that marble was a whorl of blue, frozen in clear glass like a miniature hurricane. In Maske’s stained-glass studio, Nick held his marble up to the light, turning it around to admire the colors.

Next to him, Maske soldered the marble’s “cage” onto the end of a stained-glass kaleidoscope chamber. Nick had made the chamber the week before, as part of a kaleidoscope class that Maske and his wife, Ann, offer at Angel Antics Glass Crafters in East Sullivan. The marble suspended at the end of the tube would become the backdrop for an ever-changing microcosm of color and pattern.

“When you get into a kaleidoscope you kind of get into another world,” Ann Maske said. “It really does take the stress away.”

According to Cozy Baker, a Maryland resident who has written more than a half-dozen books on kaleidoscopes and is considered the leading authority on the subject, hospitals and clinics have started to used kaleidoscopes as a therapeutic device. Preliminary results of a Japanese study have shown that people’s breathing slows while they’re looking through a kaleidoscope’s lens.

“They are more than entertainment,” said Baker. “It’s a meditative tool. Kaleidoscopes more and more are being used in stress reduction.”

The Maskes didn’t need a study to tell them that, though.

“A kaleidoscope is an anti-grumpy device – you can’t help but smile when you look inside,” Jerry Maske said, holding up one of his own creations. “If you’re looking at it and put it into the bright sunlight it would just knock your socks off.”

While Silvestrone is one of the Maskes’ younger students, the couple teaches people of all ages how to make the optical wonders. Because Nick is an experienced glass crafter, it only took two classes for him to make his kaleidoscope. Usually the Maskes will spend one or two classes going over basic glass-cutting and soldering techniques, then another class or two to assemble the kaleidoscope. For younger students, the Maskes skip the glass altogether and instead use plastic tubes with a revolving wheel at the end, covered in shells and sea glass collected at a nearby beach.

“Anyone can take the classes, but we limit the age depending on what we’re doing,” Jerry Maske said. “Everything in here is sharp and dangerous.”

Even people who are used to working with glass can’t avoid the occasional accident. Maske’s fingers are rough with tiny scars and Nick had a bandaged finger.

“I brought Band-Aids with me last time,” Nick said. “My hands are always cut.”

Nick started working with glass last summer while visiting his aunt in California. She sent him back with cutting equipment, soldering irons and other supplies, but he needed more stained glass. When he went to buy some at Angel Antics, he saw Maske’s elaborate kaleidoscopes on display and decided he wanted to make one, too.

“My mom wanted me to take a glass class, so I decided to take the kaleidoscope class,” Nick said.

For years, Maske had dabbled in kaleidoscope making, but he was never satisfied with the results. Then, two years ago, he and Ann went to the annual meeting of the Brewster Society when it was held in Kennebunkport. Named for Sir David Brewster, the kaleidoscope’s inventor, the group brings together the country’s top kaleidoscope makers with collectors from around the world. In Kennebunkport, the Maskes spent hours talking to the craftsmen about techniques and design.

“I really got going with it then,” Jerry Maske said.

The Maskes were inspired by the variety and quality of work. While stained-glass designs are popular, people also make kaleidoscopes from stone, metal and more unusual materials, such as eggs or gourds. Plumbers make them from pipes; jewelers mount tiny ones on rings and dangle them as pendants from necklaces. The world’s largest kaleidoscope was made in a silo.

“The variety is absolutely incredible,” Ann Maske said. “It’s just, ‘What does your imagination want to do?'”

For the Maskes, both 57, stained glass was a logical medium. It’s what brought the two of them together 10 years ago, when Jerry was attending Bangor Theological Seminary and working as a minister in the Hancock County village of Ashville. Ann was working as a schoolteacher in Rhode Island, but her mother lived in East Sullivan and attended Maske’s church.

“She called me up and said, ‘Ann, you’ve got to meet the minister. He’s single and he does stained glass,'” Ann Maske said.

It was a while before the two met, but they really hit it off. They got married, moved to New Hampshire, and returned to East Sullivan several years ago. They opened Angel Antics a little over a year ago.

“Boy, it’s the best thing that happened to us,” Jerry Maske said. “We love working together.”

And for the glass crafters in the area, it’s the best thing that happened to them, too.

“We’re so lucky to have them here,” Nick’s mom, Nina Zeldin, said.

She doesn’t have to drive an hour or more to buy glass or supplies for Nick. Plus, the Maskes helped him create a work of art for the house. Zeldin plans to display the kaleidoscope along with Nick’s other glass creations.

She may have a hard time getting it away from him, though. After putting the finishing touches on his kaleidoscope, Nick took a look at it, running his fingers over the intricate soldering work, and finally raising it to his eye.

“Whoa, that’s cool,” he said, smiling, as he watched the mirrors splinter his marble into dazzling pattern of blue.

Stained-glass kaleidoscope classes cost about $150 including materials. Angel Antics is located on Route 1 in East Sullivan. Winter hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Saturday and by chance. For information, call 422-2250 or visit www.angelantics.net.