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About Sea Glass 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 |
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