Wow, I can go on and on about sea glass, also called beach glass or mermaids' tears. I have so much fun collecting it. My Mom and Dad collect for me as well. I sold most of my sea glass pendants before they could even make it to this website, but check back, I'm busy making more! Check out my sea glass album on the next page for some great pics of sea glass and its varied colors.

Collecting on the Chesapeake, and in Bermuda, below

Sea glass is a beautiful example of recycling by Nature as far as I'm concerned. A bottle (or too many bottles in many cases) tossed into the water breaks in the surf, and years later its shards have transformed into beautiful gems worthy of becoming part of a favorite piece of jewelry, and the source of many compliments!

I have seen completely intact bottles in full patina lying on the reef bottom as I snorkeled in Bermuda. They lay in twelve or so feet of water, so I was unable to retrieve them. One had markings on it saying "Florida Water". I still have to research what that was.

Sea glass forms partially as the result of glass rolling in sandy surf, but also because of a chemical reaction of the glass with the salt water. The longer the glass is in the water, and becomes hydrated, the more of a patina, or "frost" it develops as a result of the lime and soda elements of the glass leaching out. Because a unique chemical transformation takes place, beach glass may one day achieve gemstone status. The patina often sparkles like tiny diamonds in the light, one of the hallmarks of genuine sea glass, a trait that has yet to be achieved by simply tumbling or acid washing glass commercially. Some of the pieces I collected in Bermuda have such a thick frosting; you have to wet them to see the true color of the piece. I personally think the salinity levels of the water have an effect on the "frost". The pieces I find along the brackish Chesapeake have a slightly rougher patina than the ones I pick in Bermuda. Occasionally, I find glass on rocky beaches that has smooth edges but uneven patina from limited time in the salt water. I usually throw these back to finish "curing", but some pieces are so pretty and unusual I end up using them in jewelry.

Sea glass can be found in a multitude of colors. Richard La Motte, a fellow Chesapeake beachcomber, has written a lovely book, "Pure Sea Glass" that details the origins and commonality of these increasingly coveted collectibles. The most common colors found are clear, brown, and kelly green, the color of many beer bottles.

Uncommon colors tend be older glass from the sixties and beyond. One look and you can recognize that it is not the color scheme used commercially today. The uncommon colors I encounter the most are the amber, forest green, and lime green, though I notice the lime green is harder to find. The glass with a soft green shade that looks so ethereal were often times turn of the century Coca-Cola bottles.

The "champagne" to purple colored sea glass is often extremely old clear glass made circa WW1. Magnesium used as an ingredient is glassmaking at that time caused the glass to develop a purple color after long term exposure to the UV rays of the sun.
I find a lot of extremely old (possibly up to 300 years!) forest green and brown glass in Bermuda that has darkened in the sun to the point that it appears black.

The rare colors are the blues and aqua tones, which are truly a delight to the eyes. There are many shades within what I consider "aqua", I'd recommend Richard's book above to get the full list. I find a lot of true aqua specimens in Bermuda, and more soft blue and periwinkle shades on the Chesapeake shores. There are some great teal colored specimens I have found along the Chesapeake, as well as the cool Vaseline jar green that has iridescence to it.

The most rare sea glass colors are the grays, yellows and lavenders. I have one yellow sea glass gem that I found on a jaunt along the Chesapeake with my Mom. A few gray pieces as well. Perhaps one will turn up in a piece of jewelry on this site if I am able to part with it!

The rarest of all is orange, and red, which I have yet to find. These colors are the find of a lifetime for sea glass collectors, the oldest of it originating from stained glass panels shipped to the new world from Europe, the newest from automobile blinkers and lights from early cars.

Some sea glass has wavy irregular shapes as if it had been melted. I found a lot of this type in Bermuda. The most likely cause for this formation is that it was "campfire glass"; bottles thrown into trash burning pits and bonfires by soldiers, workers, or even pirates many years ago. It must have been quite a few years ago, you don't hear of too many guys today saying, "Honey, think I'll go down to the bonfire for a few beers...”! This glass has a very unusual look, though it is hard to set in silver due to its baroque edges. It often has grains of sand or sea plants imbedded in it. Occasionally, I find pieces that are bi-colored, from two separate glass shards melting together. Very nice specimens similar to these can be found in areas where glass companies used to dump unused molten glass every evening. The "end of day" glass patterns are spectacular, and the edges are very smooth and unusual. I'm still looking for some of this! I have heard a lot can be found in England.

Sea glass also has stories to it. Was the piece someone's pop bottle in the sixties, or was it part of a sea captain's liquor bottle? Perhaps some of that old Chesapeake sea glass was around during the Battle of 1812. Maybe a few fragments of the Bermuda sea glass I've collected carry the energy of pirates gathered around a fire, reveling into the night. Then there's sea pottery, shards of broken china worn smooth by the sea. Who owned it? Was a teacup tossed purposely into the waves by a haughty aristocrat, or lost in a shipwreck? We can only speculate, but isn't that fun!

I had an interesting experience with one batch of sea glass I brought from Bermuda. It had to be from the dark forest green glass since I did not encounter this again...I know it sounds superstitious, but I didn't collect any more of that, and have not noticed the same energy since, though I'm getting brave enough to pick it again. That ghostly batch had me getting up in the middle of the night to place it outside on my deck. Two years later I'm finally making jewelry with it. I could feel some kind of strange energy to it! I kept thinking of pirates, so perhaps that was the origin of it. There was a small amount of privateer (basically government authorized pirating) and pirate activity in Bermuda up until the 1790's. The smaller Islets in Bermuda were perfect hideouts to the pirates when they weren't sacking the Spanish islands.

I'll keep you posted of any more sea glass stories; of course, you can always send me yours! I'll post them here.

My Dad, Richard, scans the Atlantic shoreline.

My Mom, Ruth, on the Chesapeake

Mermaid Sea Glass
Kim Gough,  P.O. Box 242,  Stevenson, MD 21153
410-830-1516
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