West Coast Sea Glass blogs

Sea Glass Marbles: HOW DO GLASS MARBLES END UP ON THE BEACH?

Fri, 17 Jun 2022 23:40:31 GMT

HOW DO GLASS MARBLES END UP ON THE BEACH?

There are several theories about why historical glass marbles occasionally wash up on the world's beaches, even today.

Reason #1 : In the late 1800's an inventor named Hiram Codd designed a glass soda bottle that used a marble as the stopper at the top. Similarly, the Japanese glass Ramune bottle was also sealed-up with a marble stopper; many times blue ones! These two bottle styles were used in the US and around the world and likely account for a great many of the beach marbles that have been found (and can occasionally still be found) along shorelines globally. When a bottle was discarded, often into the sea, the bottle would break against the rocky shore and the marble might stay intact and tumble for years and likely decades!
Historically, marbles were like playtime currency for children! Finding a bottle, and breaking it to get the marble out was quite common.

Reason #2 : Decades ago marbles were one of the most popular toys used. Young children played dozens of marble games; Taw games, marble races down a beach slope and marbles were even used in sling shots as ammunition. The shore is usually the lowest spot in any beach town or community. Toy marbles roll downward, down stream, down sewer pipe, down runoff trenches, culverts and more. Gravity accounts for many a marble journey toward shore.

Additionally, the beach made a great place for target practice. Some children played games by floating a "moving target" piece of driftwood off shore then shot their marbles out into the water toward the target. Some seagulls often became the moving targets also. The resulting marbles which landed just offshore, one day washed beachward.

Reason #3 : For a span of years, post-industrial-era in the US, marbles found along the railroad lines are most likely the result of dumped over freight-glass. The 3/4", orb-like pieces were shipped all over the country for use in the manufacture of fiberglass. It is also believed that glass marbles may have been used for ease in rolling freight and cargo around. This only explains the sea glass marble locale when a rail yard or railway is situated near or along a waterfront.

Reason #4 : If you are beachcombing near a coastal landfill site, you will have more luck in finding a coveted sea glass marble. Painters often dropped a handful of marbles into a can of paint to help mix the batch. When the paint was used up and the can was tossed into the city dump (often times the dump was the sea-bluffs at the edge of town) the salt water and ocean's natural biodegrading ability decomposed the paint can over the years. The marbles became what was left and each washed around upon the shore until individually beach combed.

Reason #5 : Ship's ballast? For hundreds of years, ships and cargo vessels were loaded with heavy items to help provide ballast. Marbles may have provided this weight inexpensively and effectively when the boxes or barrel containers were transported in the hull of a ship.

The Marble Collectors Society of America writes "Clay marbles were made in both Germany and the US. It has been reported that clay marbles were used as ballast in the keels of ships that sailed to America from Germany and then were removed and sold in the US".

In the Puget Sound where the tides move fast and the inlets can be narrow, ballast is key to keeping a sailing vessel upright and true. It reminds me of the white water rafting trips my family goes on down the remote Hell's Canyon in Idaho's back-country. The heavier, more weighted-down boats fare much better in the turbulent rapids than the lighter rafts. Ships along the Pacific Ocean's rough shore also needed this kind of weight to help with navigability. Yet should they be smashed upon the rocks, the barrels of marbles would surely be lost to sea only to roll up on shore decades and sometimes even centuries later.

"A sea glass collecting friend of mine, Stephanie in the Virgin Islands messaged me multiple times with a story of how, one blessed day, she found more than just one or two marble finds. She was trying to solve the mystery of why the marbles ended up there on the beach.
She was hiking along a shore that was lined with steep, sandy cliffs, One afternoon she discovered one or two marbles up higher on the beach bank, above that day's high tide line! Then she discovered another that led her up, away from the water's edge to yet another. She kept walking and continued to find them! Eventually she found herself staring directly into the cliff face. With no tools, she had nothing but her bare hands, she decided to dig into the clay-like cliff's side. In just a couple scoops of sand, she said, several marbles came tumbling down, right out of the cliff wall itself at about waist height!

Stephanie did some research and believes that they may have been poured out there years, and years before she even visited that beach. She'd heard early stories of the rum runners during the late 1800's that carried barrels on sloops back and forth throughout the Caribbean to fill with alcohol. She shared stories of how the barrels were oftentimes filled with heavy items prior to their pickup so that the ships had heavy ballast."

- The Ultimate Guide to Sea Glass

At West Coast Sea Glass, we occasionally let go of one of our beautiful, antique sea glass marbles. They can be found on this page: Collector's Rarities

Peninsula Daily News - "Seeing Through Glass Eyes" by Diane Urbani De La Paz

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:26:14 GMT

Peninsula Daily News - "Seeing Through Glass Eyes"

by Diane Urbani De La Paz

February 5, 2013

You might call West Coast Sea Glass a romantic recycler. Beuke, in her bedroom-size studio, turns broken bits into jewelry that conjure up five senses’ worth of images – blue water, pounding surf, salty air. “A hundred years ago, people threw their garbage in the ocean,” mused Beuke. “Now nature is offering it up.”

Combing beaches

Beuke 42, moved to the Peninsula a decade ago to become youth pastor at Sequim Community Church. When she gave birth to twins four years ago, she became a stay-at-home mom. Now another phase of her girlhood, is under way. Like a lot of people who grew up in the Pacific Northwest, Beuke spent weekends combing beaches for glass, pottery shards and shells. Then the people in her life, combined with natural forces, converged to make sea glass collecting a good business and something she calls “a lifestyle.”

Her mother was president of the Oregon Antique Dealers Association and a dealer specializing in glassware. Todd, her husband of 12 years, is a Pacific Northwest historian and teacher at Sequim Middle School. Another influence is the oceans, with their power to polish old milk of magnesia and beer bottles into luminous gems. The cobalt blue, deep green, aqua and pink pieces Beuke uses to make jewelry were, she said, mere trash when they were tossed into the water. She gives histories for each piece, based on color, shape and texture. She shows off baskets of smooth, sea-foam green shapes that were Coca-Cola bottles in another era. There’s a cache of chocolate-brown bits – one of which fetched $26 – that once belonged to whiskey bottles.

Beuke sells her loose sea glass to jewelry makers, and produces her own adornments to sell on her Web site, www.westcoastseaglass.com

Sea glass sells well
Sea glass sells well here.

“It’s natural; it’s beachy,” said Destination Salon owner Ruth Carlin. “I think it’s lovely because it’s simple.”

“But it’s becoming a rare resource,” Beuke said. Around the world, beach erosion is causing sand to be washed out to sea, leaving less beachfront for Beuke to comb. So this is sea glass’ moment” ... Beuke added ...

She’ll be a keynote speaker at the Ocean Shores Beachcombers Festival in March. She’s organizing vendors for October’s North American Sea Glass Festival in Santa Cruz, Calif. And she is the online moderator of an international group of sea glass collectors. Yet the Peninsula is clearly Beuke’s element. Low tide, day or night, brings her out to the sand with her collecting bag and head lamp.

“I have a 50-mile radius of beaches on the Peninsula,” she said. “On my last hike, I walked for 10 hours.”

On a recent morning, Beuke worked in her studio, printing orders for her jewelry and sorting sea glass by color and shape. Todd had gone out for a walk.

“He’s a birder,” Beuke said. So he mostly looks up, not down at the sand. That doesn’t mean he came back empty-handed. In a gesture both romantic and businesslike, Todd dropped eight tiny pieces of sea glass into his partner’s palm. “He found a lavender piece,” said Beuke, impressed...

Living on the Peninsula - "Sea Glass Colors Her Life" by Patricia Morrison Coate

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:25:57 GMT

Living on the Peninsula -

"Sea Glass Colors Her Life"

by Patricia Morrison Coate

May 31, 2006 -

“It probably started when I was a little girl, growing up on the coast of Oregon,” Beuke recalled. “I went to the beach with my brothers and sisters and we called it ‘treasure hunting.’ I’ve always had sea glass, but I really got into it 10 years ago and I had no idea I had really one of the best collections in the world.”

Not content merely to amass tens of thousands of pieces in a rainbow palette, Beuke began educating herself on the what, where and how of sea glass.

“I can tell in a second the difference between real and tumbled glass and I’m guessing most people can’t because it takes a lifetime. You can’t mimic it in a (rock) tumbler,” Beuke said.

Despite her knack in spotting bits of beach jewels – on her best day she pocketed 1,500 pieces over 12 hours with a friend – she learned that sea glass is a scant commodity and one that has history and intrigue to it.

“I can look at a piece and tell you all about it,” she said, palming pieces in red (train/boat lantern glass or a ruby goblet), orange (fine European tableware), dark purple (an early electrical insulator), pale green (a bottle stopper), dark green and brown (soda, beer and liquor bottles). “I can look at a piece and tell you how many decades old it is. One hundred, even 50 years ago, they’d haul stuff out on boats and dump it into the water. On the North Olympic Peninsula, whole schooners would be loaded with refuse, set adrift and burned, so now we have ‘bonfire glass’ where one piece has melted into another.”

With a fellow aficionado, Lindsay Treiber, Beuke developed a rarity chart for West Coast Sea Glass. From the rarest to most common, the colors are orange, lavender, red/cranberry, yellow, turquoise, pink, grey, jade green, olive green, teal, lime/seafoam green, conflower blue, cobalt blue, aquamarine, emerald green, amber brown, chocolate brown and white/clear.

Beuke still thinks of searching for sea glass as treasure hunting, but now the colorful chunks she collects often become treasures for admirers worldwide. Through her cottage-industry company, West Coast Sea Glass Jewelry, she fashions and sells rings, earrings, pendants, key chains, cufflinks, hair barrettes, charm bracelets, necklaces and anklets on the international market via the Internet and at shows nationally. As she notes on her Web site at www.westcoastseaglass.com , “It is 100-percent genuine, naturally sculpted by the waves, sand, winds, tides and currents of the ocean…” She also sells some of her most dynamic sea glass finds to high-end jewelers who craft one-of-a-kind pieces in gold.

Sea glass collecting, buying and selling has an international following and Beuke shares her knowledge through photos and phone calls, often helping less experienced collectors identify their pieces. Others recognize her expertise in the field and she’s a sought-after speaker at sea glass seminars.

Beuke didn’t realize she had one of the premier collections of sea glass worldwide until she read Richard LaMotte’s definitive book, “Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems.” The eminent sea glass expert, despite having amassed his own study group of 30,000 pieces of sea glass, had no true orange orbs in his collection, so he had to borrow some to be photographed for his book (2004, Chesapeake Seaglass Publishing).

Sequim Gazette - "From Trash to Treasure"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:25:34 GMT

Sequim Gazette -

"From Trash to Treasure"

by Ashley Oden, Staff Writer

April 15, 2013 -

For the next three months, Beuke’s extensive collection of sea glass will be on display at the Museum of Arts Center of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley. Some people say her collection is one of the best in the world, Beuke said. “And it’s all right here in little old Sequim.”

Beuke has been collecting sea glass and making jewelry from it all her life. She started as a young girl living on the Oregon Coast, but it wasn’t until about five years ago that she decided to advance the hobby to a professional level. “People kept wanting jewelry as Christmas presents and placing orders” she said. “So, I started West Coast Sea Glass and haven’t slowed down since.”

Sea glass is rising in popularity worldwide, according to Beuke. “It’s quite fashionable on the East Coast, but here on the West Coast a lot of people still don’t know what it is,” she said.

Put simply, sea glass is any glass found on beaches along oceans and large lakes that’s been tumbled and smoothed by water to create smooth pieces of frosted looking glass. “It takes nature hundreds of years to tumble a piece of glass,” Beuke said. “And it’s a dying resource.”

It’s a dying resource because people no longer throw garbage into the ocean like they did hundreds of years ago and not as many products are made from glass either; she explained. “There will come a day when people won’t be able to find sea glass anywhere anymore.”

Some colors are already harder to find than others. Beuke made a copyrighted rarity chart to help beachcombers assess their findings. Orange, red, yellow and turquoise are the most difficult colors to find because not very many manufacturers have made bottles in those shades, she said. Pink, black, teal green, gray and UV lime are also pretty rare, whereas white, brown and emerald green are three of the most common colors of sea glass, according to the chart.

“It is extremely difficult to find certain colors: you can search a lifetime and never find them,” Beuke said. If you have an orange piece of sea glass – true orange, not honey amber; which is from a bear glass – you most likely have a fine piece of Czechoslovakian glassware.”

She’s spent days – and even nights – on the beach searching for orange and red sea glass and has only handfuls of the rare gems, Beuke admitted.

Red sea glass is accounted only once for every 5,000 pieces found, according to Wikipedia.org. And it’s predicted that in 20 years red sea glass will be worth as much as a large diamond, the Web site stated.

Putting color aside, the peninsula is home to some unique pieces of sea glass simply because of its logging history, Beuke said. “Where there’s been logging traffic from the land to the ocean there’s going to be glass, and that’s something that’s pretty unique to our area.”

Above all, beachcombers must respect beach laws and regulations, Beuke reminded. “That means not trespassing onto private property or illegally removing any items from the shoreline,” she said.

Sea glass isn’t illegal to remove from the beach because it’s considered “garbage,” Beuke explained. “We are simply cleaning up the beaches.”

So many of her dreams have come true already, but Beuke is still working hard toward the future. “My dream is to have my own museum or studio spot that’s headquarters to the North American Sea Glass Association,” she said. Beuke is president of the association and will speak at the Ocean Shores Beachcombers Festival in March.

I have people call me from all over the world to see my collection and I want to be able to allow them to view these precious pieces,” she said. “My home is not the right place for that anymore.

Beuke is also working on writing two books: one that uses sea glass as a “wonderful life metaphor” and one that teaches children about sea glass and beachcombing.

Putting her finger on exactly why she’s passionate about sea glass isn’t easy, Beuke admitted. “Sea glass in itself is so enchanting and a little mystical… I guess like looking at a piece that’s a couple hundred years old and imagining what it once was.”

Shore Lines Newsletter - The View From Here

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:25:14 GMT

Shore Lines Newsletter -

The View From Here

North American Sea Glass Association

September 1, 2008

http://seaglassassociation.org/Docs/Newsletter-20080921-lores.pdf

It's been said that by picking up sea glass you are making a contribution to keeping our beaches clean. And though most avid collectors would never like to see sea glass diminish entirely, the fact is, it is a dwindling treasure.

That’s why the August issue of National Geographic mentioned sea glass and the North American Sea Glass Association in its Environment section. NASGA has also recently donated funds to national shoreline restoration groups (see inset). And 90% of this newsletter is enjoyed online which cuts down on paper resources.

My hope is that as you sea glass hunt, you stoop a few extra times to pick up that plastic bottle or trash and place it in the recycle bin.

Green hunting to you all!

– Mary Beth Beuke, President, North American Sea Glass Association

Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Sea of Color"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:24:55 GMT

Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Sea of Color"

by Leah Bartos

October 6, 2007

This year’s festival, sponsored by the North American Sea Glass Association, runs today and Sunday at the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk’s Cocoanut Grove and features artisan vendors, lectures, workshops and the opportunity to win $1000 in the “Shard of the Year” contest.

Sorting through bins of colored glass shards on a daily basis, sea glass experts like NASGA president Mary Beth Beuke can easily distinguish between the dark hues of a Victorian era medicine bottle and the lighter shades of an early 20th century canning jar.

“Each piece has a history. You can learn a lot about an area by looking at the sea glass there,” Beuke said. “And a lot of people think that it’s just garbage.”

A lifelong seal glass collector, Beuke owns West Coast Sea Glass, a company based in Puget Sound, Wash. and distributes sea glass products to 38 galleries and shows across the nation.

In addition to scouting the sea glass shards by kayak or by foot along the Pacific Northwest coast line, Beuke has also dedicated herself to studying the history of the area to better appreciate her discoveries. Drawing on methods common to archaeologists and historians, Beuke can see in her shards an emerging picture of the Pacific Northwest settlement patterns and the historical impacts of the logging and shipping industries.

But, unlike her scholarly counterparts, Beuke finds a sense of mysticism surrounding sea glass culture.

“Identifying sea glass is a challenge between history’s truth and one’s imagination, because there’s a little of both involved,” Beuke said.

For those curious about the history of their own sea glass shards, the festival also will have experts on hand to identify the possible origins of the pieces.

Among the sea glass identifiers will be Richard LaMotte, a NASGA board member and author of Pure Sea Glass. LaMotte spent several years collecting and researching sea glass, and estimates he has 40,000 sea glass shards in his Maryland home.

Since the book’s publication in 2004, LaMotte has traveled all over the country for book signings and has met thousands of other sea glass enthusiasts, many of whom are eager to share their stories about sea glass. As LaMotte has found, many collectors have a strong emotional tie to their beachcombing discoveries.

“For a lot of people, it’s more than finding something to put in jewelry.” LaMotte said, recalling several stories collectors shared with him about losing family members and finding a piece of sea glass to commemorate their death. “It really represents a healing process for a lot of people.”

In addition to networking opportunities or the chance for early holiday shopping, undoubtedly many will be drawn by the allure of a $1,000 prize. In fact, last years winner is still reaping the benefits.

“We built a half-pipe for skate-boarding in the back yard. It was kindof a family thing,” said 13-year-old Bailey Ryan, who won last year’s “Shard of the Year” contest with a perfectly round, turquoise bottle stopper she discovered on a family vacation in Hawaii.

Seattle Times - "Beachcombing for sea glass..."

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:24:25 GMT

Seattle Times

"Beachcombing for sea glass..."

Seattle Times

May 3, 2009 - http://seattletimes.com/html/pacificnw/2009158179_pacificpglass03.html

She'll stop, reach down among the gray monochrome cobbles for a tiny glint of weathered glass and examine it like an archaeologist in a Middle Eastern dig. Gorgeous, she thinks. Amberina. Depression-era glassware. Beautifully weathered and quite rare. Or, far more frequently, she'll pick up a shard of green or amber glass, inspect its sharp edges, shake her head and flip it out into the salty shallows so it can be given over to a few more years of Mother Nature's handiwork.

Beuke is a part-time youth program director and mother of three in Sequim, on the shores of the Strait of Juan de Fuca. She is also a leader among a small but growing network of artists and collectors who are interested in, or downright obsessed with, sea glass.

Anybody who has explored Puget Sound beaches knows the stuff. Chances are they have a few pieces lying on a kitchen windowsill or filtering sunlight in a jelly jar. Some call it beach glass, or even "mermaid tears," but we know it as sea glass. And it's everywhere, scattered among the cobbles and seaweed up and down the beach, waiting for somebody to stroll by and decide it's a keeper.

Beuke and her longtime friend and fellow collector, Lindsay Furber of Tacoma, have elevated sea glass to another level. In their eyes, those smooth, frosted nuggets of translucent green and amber and red are semiprecious stones. And, thanks to the Internet, these beach lovers have turned their jewels into a unique, eco-friendly cottage industry, West Coast Sea Glass in Sequim, where they market their wares around the world. Recently Beuke sold a Valentine bracelet made of heart-shaped sea glass, set in silver, for $800. A Florida resort bought 1,000 pieces of glass to give away as eco-friendly gifts to clients. "We're in 30 or more galleries across the country," she says. "And they keep asking us for more."

Beuke also serves as president of the North American Sea Glass Association, a loose-knit organization of beachcombers and artists and entrepreneurs that each year gathers in a shoreside community, usually on the East Coast, for a weekend sea-glass festival. Last year's event in Delaware drew 4,000 people from around the world. This year's will be on the shores of Lake Erie, a reminder that glass can be found on freshwater beaches as well.

Glass collecting is more established in the East, Beuke says. Maryland salesman Richard LaMotte got interested through his wife and eventually wrote the definitive book on the subject, "Pure Sea Glass," which has gone through 10 printings and still sells. In the East, he says, choice shards of glass are selling for $200 or more.

Still, Beuke says, attendance at the annual festivals indicates interest is growing in the West. Now several dealers are operating in California. And a stroll through the gift shops on Water Street in Port Townsend shows a market gaining momentum from local collectors and artisans. One, Peter Messerschmidt, has sold pieces on eBay to buyers from as far away as Australia.

But for most sea-glass lovers, it's not about making money. Even Beuke, probably the region's leading glass entrepreneur, insists that her business serves mostly to rationalize and subsidize her love for the beaches of Puget Sound.

And of the world. Lured by glass, Beuke and Furber have traveled to Hawaii, Florida, Puerto Rico, England and the Mediterranean. Later this summer, they'll be sailing to the Greek Isles. And next fall, they'll show up on the shores of Lake Erie to trade glass and travel stories.

"That's really what it's about," says Furber. "We're friends and collectors, and we get to see beautiful beaches."

AS A HOBBY, collecting sea glass is a blend of beachcombing, art and, in a very real sense, of recycling. If diamonds are nature's creation, improved by man, then sea glass is quite the opposite — man's creation improved by nature.

Collectors may tell you that sea glass is flotsam that has drifted from faraway lands or ancient shipwrecks. Maybe, but probably not. Fact is, most of today's sea glass is yesterday's garbage. And most of it dates to a relatively small window of time that begins in the mid- to late-1800s, when glass bottles became a commodity deemed less valuable than their contents. "We were becoming a throwaway society," says LaMotte. "People consumed the contents and tossed the bottle."

In retrospect, of course, dumping our garbage in the ocean was a bad habit. But, for cities like Seattle, the ocean seemed the logical place to get rid of stuff. It was big, downhill from everywhere and seemingly bottomless; the rubbish all appeared to wash away with the next high tide. The impulse goes back thousands of years; Native Americans on Puget Sound dumped their clamshells and fishbones onto the nearest beach where they eventually became what historians call "middens," mounds of garbage that today are gold mines for archeologists.

But a modern consumer economy, with its emphasis on throwaway packaging, eventually transformed a bad habit into a worldwide epidemic. Over the years, Seattle dumped untold millions of tons of garbage on the shores of Elliott Bay, along Alki Beach, in Union Bay, Interbay and elsewhere. In my adopted town of Port Townsend, trucks backed up to the edge of a bluff and dumped the town detritus onto the rocky shore of the Strait of Juan de Fuca.

While those official dumps were closed years ago, the sloppy habits persist. In a single, designated day last year, volunteers collected more than 6 million pounds of garbage from beaches around the world. From the 10,000 miles of American beaches they scoured, they picked up 3.9 million pounds of junk — including 168,849 glass beverage bottles.

What happens next to all of this depends on the substance. Paper and food waste begin to decompose almost immediately. Tin and most other metals begin to rust. Plastic floats away, breaks down into smaller pieces and becomes part of a global environmental problem.

But glass — while it may be unsightly and add tons to the cleanup statistics — is inert, a man-made compound that does not taint the waters it lives in. Year after year, bottles and vases and drinking glasses are tossed about by waves and currents, breaking down into smaller pieces, gradually weathering sharp edges into gentle curves, transforming jagged shards into smoother, ever more aesthetic shapes.

The saltwater itself plays an important chemical role, says LaMotte. Glass is made from about 75 percent silica, or sand, 15 percent soda and 10 percent lime. Once exposed to saltwater, the glass undergoes a process of "hydration," under which the soda interacts with the chemicals in the water, leaving that frosted surface craved by collectors.

It doesn't happen overnight. LaMotte estimates that it takes at least 20 years of weathering for a jagged shard to become a smooth stone. But the beaches of Puget Sound and adjacent waters offer ideal conditions: a mix of sand and stone buffeted by wind and waves. But our biggest advantage is our dramatic tidal changes — up to 15 feet a day, compared to mere inches in California waters. And extreme low tides greatly increase the amount of beach available to those who crave the hunt.

EACH SPRING, on a warm day with low daylight tides, my wife and friends return to the shore of the strait, eager to begin again. They don backpacks and hike out to Port Townsend's Glass Beach — the unmarked stretch of shoreline at the foot of the bluff that once served as the town dump. It's an easy, 90-minute hike from North Beach, but you know you're there when you see corroded auto parts jutting out of the sand.

And where you find junk, you'll find glass, nestled between stones, half buried in hardpacked sand, or just lying there, glinting in the sun. There will be bits of frosted green from wine bottles or amber from beer bottles, fragments of clear or aqua-blue from early Coke bottles. On a good day, you'll find drops of blue, perhaps from early medicine bottles. My wife is especially fond of the pottery shards, beautifully weathered and rounded, framing what's left of the glazed pastels.

I'm partial to the marbles, their colors frosted from years of hydration. Beuke says they were kids' toys that found their way into the dump. Others say painters used to drop a few marbles into their paint cans to help with mixing, then dumped the marbles with the empty cans. Either way, they're gorgeous.

It's not about quantity," Beuke says. "You can fill your pockets with garbage that we don't even call sea glass. It's about age and color and texture."

She and other experts know where to look, but they protect their favorite beaches in much the same way fly fishermen do their fishing holes. Novices will be on their own.

Glass is obviously everywhere. But these days most of it is "contemporary," garbage from last weekend's beer bash — thin, sharp-edged and worthless. For the good stuff, Beuke and friends look for beaches adjacent to older seaport towns. They seek evidence of old piers, resorts or dumps. Beuke frequently consults her husband, a history teacher who searches local historical records for long-abandoned dumpsites. And they always prefer "windward" beaches exposed to storms and prevailing winds — the eastern shores of Puget Sound or the south side of the strait.

LaMotte says he has good luck near the mouths of rivers, where upriver throwaways eventually work their way downstream.

Beuke says she avoids trodding over private lands, opting for beaches with good public access.

She also knows when to look, preferably during minus tides that expose more tidelands — the same tides craved by clam diggers. Searching immediately after a decent windstorm increases the odds of finding something swell. Most collectors prefer to hunt late in the afternoon, when a low sun provides side or back light. Lindsay Furber actually prefers cloudy days, when the colors seem to jump out. And she never wears sunglasses.

The Early Bird rule also applies: Be there first. By midsummer, Port Townsend's Glass Beach will be picked fairly clean.

But then come the shorter days, and those low winter tides occur in the middle of the night. Storms blow in off the Pacific, tumbling the beach, top to bottom, unearthing a new trove of long-buried glass. And the cycle is renewed.

Those who troll for treasures say it's most important to enjoy where you are — on the edge of the continent. Take a break from the hunt, they say, lift your gaze to the horizon and appreciate the fact that you live in a place that has an ocean at its front door.

After all, it's really not about the glass. It's about the beach.

Ross Anderson, a former Seattle Times reporter, is a freelance journalist based in Port Townsend. His recent work is at ROSSINK.com. Steve Ringman is a Times staff photographer.

Coastal Living - "A Touch of Glass"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:24:09 GMT

Coastal Living - "A Touch of Glass"

October 1, 2007

West Sea Glass has been featured on multiple occasions within Coastal Living Magazine including:

November 2013
October 2012
October 2011
September 2008

And In 2007 Coastal Living Magazine featured West Coast Sea Glass in Two Articles: "A Million Little Pieces" and "A Touch of Glass." The articles featured photos of West Coast Sea Glass and we helped to put the story together.

What a day! We spent hours on a sunny California beach last fall with Coastal Living's photographer and writer. We waded in the surf, sorted through sea glass, answered questions and positioned our rare sea glass pieces for the perfect magazine photos. See more of our sea glass in edition over the subsequent five years in Coastal Living Magazine.

Parade Magazine - "A Shore Thing"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:23:57 GMT

Parade Magazine - "A Shore Thing"

Parade Magazine

August 1, 2010 - http://www.parade.com/news/2010/08/01-a-shore-thing.html

People are getting very serious about sea glass.

While there is less of it on beaches than ever before—because of recycling, sand replenishment, and rising water levels—interest in collecting “mermaid’s tears” has only grown in intensity. To get to the best sites, extreme glassers will “hike for two hours, windsurf, jet-ski long distances, even rappel down cliffs, whatever it takes,” says “Godfather of Sea Glass” Richard LaMotte, whose self-publishedPure Sea Glass has sold 85,000 copies. Individual pieces sell for up to $300, jewelry can run into the thousands, and sea glass’s comforting hues are increasingly popular for home decorating.

There’s even a North American Sea Glass Association (NASGA) whose two-day fall confab draws more than 5000, highlighted by the Shard of the Year contest with its $1000 prize. (There are complex rules about colors and how weathered, or “cooked,” the pieces have to be; and extra points for lettering or unusual shapes that can denote age going back decades or even centuries.)

In my family, it’s not uncommon to find a gaggle of us glassheads combing Jersey Shore beaches, heads down. Every few minutes someone will yell “Green!” or “Brown!” or “Clear!”—or if they’re lucky, “Blue!” Our holy grails, though, are reds. My dad, our shard patriarch, searched his whole life without finding one. We take our glass pretty personally. Most people do. Some shards seem to have mystical powers, as if placed in your path by long-lost relatives or friends.

If the glassing is bad or the tide is high (low tide reveals more glass), we dream of the so-called Glass Beaches at Fort Bragg in Northern California and in Kauai, Hawaii, as well as locations along ocean and lake shores where bottles and tableware were once dumped. (It takes 30 years of wave action and high water pH to pit surfaces and smooth edges.)

This year, I decided to ask LaMotte (pictured left) — whose day job is marketing water-testing equipment — if he would take me to one of his secret spots. On a hot summer afternoon, the 50-year-old shardist and I meet at an undisclosed Chesapeake Bay location and kayak out to the beaches where he and his wife, Nancy, were first turned on to sea glass.

We come ashore to what my family would call a “target-rich environment.” Most of the times I bend over, I pick up two or three pieces—each one fully cooked. LaMotte seems disappointed by the take (and the beach erosion). But with 30,000 pieces at home, he is a generous glassing companion, and unconcerned when I pounce on a perfect purple bottle bottom. He appreciates shards large and small for their colors and bottle backstories.

Collectors love to debate whether their pieces washed in from deeper waters or sat under their beaches for years and were just revealed. LaMotte doesn’t have easy answers. “Probably both,” he says with a crinkle-eyed shrug. (He does, however, know that the fantasy of sinking a bag of newly broken blue bottles offshore and retrieving fully cooked specimens a few years later doesn’t work. Sorry.)

After a couple of hours, I have over 300 pieces. I’m not sure any are Shard of the Year contenders, but glass season is just getting into full swing: Late summer and fall storms churn up the most treasures. And the two-day NASGA convention—this year in Hyannis, Mass.—starts on Oct. 9. So we all still have plenty of time to search.

Stephen Fried is an adjunct professor at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. His new book is " Appetite for America: How Visionary Businessman Fred Harvey Built a Railroad Hospitality Empire That Civilized the Wild West. "

Seattle's "Evening Magazine"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:23:30 GMT

Seattle's "Evening Magazine"

February 25, 2014

Seattle's Evening Magazine film crew spent a day of sea glass collecting on a beautiful, Pacific Northwest beach with the team from West Coast Sea Glass. The show was filmed in late September, 2014.

WCSG staff Lindsay, Teresa and Mary Beth trekked with the shows film team, host and producers in search of sea glass. MB and Lindsay shared their insights and experience of being life long collectors and identified their finds of the day.

Then the crew spent the afternoon in the studio viewing the more treasured rare and unique pieces in West Coast Sea Glass' older collection as well as filming the artists while they created their high end sea glass jewelry.

MB's new book " The Ultimate Guide to Sea Glass " was also highlighted on the show. More details about the show will be added here soon.

The show aired in mid October, 2014. " Evening Magazine - Sea Glass Story "

HGTV - "Bath Crashers" Show

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:23:12 GMT

HGTV - "Bath Crashers" Show

"Coastal Cottage in the City"

September 5, 2014

HGTV's "Bath Crashers" contacted West Coast Sea Glass to help with a shower tiling project using aqua blue sea glass.

The show's decorators worked with WCSG to design, measure and provide aqua blue and deep teal sea glass pieces for insetting into a shower tile redo. The home owners loved the beachy touches, rustic barnwood and real sea glass inlays set into the shower's white walls. The sea glass, purchased in bulk lots added a splash of aqua blue and deep teal to the project.

The show entitled "Coastal Cottage in the City" aired 9/5/14 and will air on the DIY Network on Sept. 29, 2014 at 7:30pm E/P and Oct. 11th, 2014 at 6:30pm E/P.

The Travel Channel - "Treasures of the Deep"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:22:54 GMT

The Travel Channel

"Treasures of the Deep"

Treasure Hunter Show

July 2, 2008

It was last October. My cell phone rang while I was road tripping, north through three states, heading home from the Sea Glass Festival we had just organized in Santa Cruz, California. On the line was a producer from the Travel Channel who'd recently learned of the popularity and intrigue of sea glass. She asked, would I consider filming a show with them on "How to Cash-In on Sea Glass".

After a long philosophical discussion about the history, enchantment, story and journey behind each sea glass piece, I kindly shared that "cashing in" wasn't what sea glass was all about and nicely I said "no thank you".

Nine months passed and they contacted me once again. "We'd like to change the story a bit, do an adventure show, follow you in a kayak, interview you about sea glass history, color rarity, the love of collecting."The body content of your post goes here. To edit this text, click on it and delete this default text and start typing your own or paste your own from a different source.

So I agreed to help with a show where we trek to a remote hunting spot, I do some sharing of the origin of pieces, talk about color and discuss why people love it so much. They wanted my input because of my longtime knowledge and study of sea glass and because, at the time I was the president of the North American Sea Glass Association. And they wanted to make sure someone was there to help with identifying the pieces that we found.

I packed a suitcase, took a night flight to San Francisco, grabbed a latte and met "the crew" and huntin buddy, Charles, at a quiet marina at 8am one summer morning in July.

The spiffy new kayaks borrowed from a local outfitter, awaited us on the dock. After hooking on waterproof sound packs and running through a quick show outline, we floated away from shore. The TV show's producer, camera crew and sound guy followed us in their zippy Zodiak filming us as we ventured out; around rocky outcroppings, under a bridge, then further into the rougher bay.

After paddling through the fog for about an hour, the wind and chop began push against us. We rounded a point and soon ported on a beach, unloaded crew and gear. Then perfectly, the sun began to shine on our day.

The entire day (I counted 11 hours) from morning to dusk was spent on a warm beach; hunting, sharing, watching wildlife and sifting through our pieces. The show's host spent some extra time with me and some of my highly rare pieces which I packed along in my dry bag. We sorted them by color and laid them in our organic environment on a beach log.

The sun began to set so we kayaked back to the marina. And the famous San Francisco bay wind and "chop" was kicking in. We gave goodbye hugs and sent the crew on to their next shoot.

The show has aired the episode about 17 times since that wonderful August day. And Treasure Hunter is no longer with the Travel Channel. -Mary Beth Beuke

Radio New Zealand - "Seaside Treasures"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:22:34 GMT

Radio New Zealand - "Seaside Treasures"

New Zealand's Summer Night's Radio Show

February 15, 2017 -

West Coast Sea Glass owner, Mary Beth Beuke shares stories and information about a lifelong sea glass collection from along the world's beaches.

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible, Shaped by Time and Tide"

Fri, 18 Jun 2021 20:21:20 GMT

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible,
Shaped by Time and Tide"

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible, Shaped by Time and Tide"

October 17, 2010 - http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/19/science/19glass.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

HYANNIS, Mass. — Laura McHenry started walking Cape Cod beaches searching for sea glass a few years ago, when her marriage was breaking up and she was looking for something she and her daughter Katie, could do together for fun. “Sometimes we’ll just sit on the rocks and just comb through,” said Ms. McHenry, who lives in Centerville, Mass., as Katie, 10, displayed her finds nearby. “It’s a great place to talk.”

History draws Rachel Mack, of Grandview-on-Hudson, N.Y. “These could have come from the Half Moon” she said, pointing to white clay pipe stems, each an inch or two long and perhaps half an inch in diameter. She finds these artifacts when she kayaks along the shore of the river Henry Hudson sailed 400 years ago.

Richard LaMotte’s wife got him into it. She is a jeweler who works with sea glass, and he went with her on expeditions to Chesapeake Bay beaches near their home in Chestertown, Md. Mr. LaMotte, who works for a water analysis equipment company, got interested in how water acidity affected the glass, and how the chemicals used to make glass changed its color over the decades. Soon he was consulting archaeologists and studying the history of American glass manufacturing. Now his book, “ Pure Sea Glass ” (Sea Glass Publishing, 2004), is a bible for collectors.

They and hundreds of other enthusiasts gathered here this month for the annual meeting of the North American Sea Glass Association, to celebrate a hobby that seems an odd mix of amateur archaeology, environmental monitoring and antique collecting, with a little chemistry thrown in.

At the meeting they trade shards of glass and porcelain, buy and sell sea glass jewelry and crafts, seek expert help identifying their finds and hear presentations on shipwrecks, the glass industry and other topics.

Membership is growing and enthusiastic, Mary Beth Beuke of Sequim, Wash., the group’s president, said in an interview that sales of sea glass and its crafts are booming, even though the glass itself “is getting harder to find.”

Though sea glass collectors talk about bottles, porcelain and other cargo lost in shipwrecks, most sea glass originated far more prosaically, in garbage dumped into the ocean or piled in coastal landfills. A blue shard may be the remains of a Noxzema jar or a bottle of Bromo-Seltzer; old Coke and beer bottles produce pale-green and dark-brown shards. Now this kind of dumping is mostly a thing of the past; bottles are made of thinner glass, and plastic has replaced glass in many products.

Still, collectors and volunteers at the meeting say there is plenty to find if you know where and when to look, and what to look for. According to Mr. LaMotte, orange shards often come from glass items manufactured in the Art Deco period or from tableware manufactured in the early 1900s. Red shards are rare — old Schlitz beer bottles are one source. Some yellow shards are from glass made with uranium dioxide. These shards glow when exposed to an ultraviolet or “black” light.

But sea glass hunters do not necessarily limit themselves to glass. Some look for crockery shards, bottle stoppers, fragments of old toys, marbles — virtually anything that left human hands to be tumbled by the sea.

Devoted collectors find themselves studying glass in antique shops, at shows for bottle collectors and in museums. Eventually, some become adept at identifying even tiny finds.

At her display, Ms. Mack picked up something that looked like a dark gray stone. Small chips revealed its shiny black interior — “glass from the 1700s,” she said. “It probably held beer.”

The meeting also offered plenty of advice on finding good hunting spots. Seek out shorelines where there was manufacturing or shipping at least 50 or 100 years ago, accomplished collectors advise. For example, Ms. Mack said she has good hunting at the sites of former cross-Hudson ferry routes, where she finds the remains of bottles thrown overboard a century or more ago.

Sites with prevalent onshore winds are best, Mr. LaMotte advises in his book, and the best time to look is the first low tide after a big storm.

“It’s frustrating, but it’s fun,” said Vickie Carter of Newark, Del., a volunteer at the meeting. She collected sea glass as a child in Montauk, on Long Island, but when she took her husband there more recently, the pickings were slim. Today they hunt Woodland Beach, Del., in search of what she calls “the perfect piece — the perfect blue, the perfect red, the perfect orange.”

A perfect piece, she said, is smooth and totally frosted. When they find one, she said, “it goes into a jar and we continue to look.”

Carole Lambert, whose “ Sea Glass Hunter’s Handbook ” is her third on the subject, confesses that her interest feels, at times, “a bit loopy — picking up garbage from the beach.”

Ms. Lambert, a writer and editor who now lives in Islesboro, Me., searched for years in Rockport, Mass., where she accumulated large quantities of tiny porcelain body parts — arms, legs, noses, faces, “an ear as big as my thumb.” Eventually, she said, she learned they were the remains of tiny dolls given away in the 19th century with purchases of flour and other staples.

Why were there so many? Ms. Lambert found the answer at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem , Mass., in the form of a bill of lading from a ship that foundered, spilling crates of tiny dolls.

As sea glass grows harder to find, people who want to work with it are creating their own, tumbling pieces of glass in sand-filled machines or treating them with muriatic acid or other corrosive substances.

“That’s one of the reasons we started the association,” Ms. Beuke said. “We started running into people who say ‘sea glass’ and they mean something that is artificially conditioned.” The real thing, she said, “has been conditioned only by the ocean and its elements. It has been on a journey and has a history to it.”

Mr. LaMotte, whose book display was thronged by collectors, said many had asked him to identify shards he could tell “immediately” were not the real thing. “You get this very satiny sheen, almost like a filmy sheen,” he said.

On the other hand, occasionally a collector will hit a shoreline jackpot. One is Jean Hood of Buffalo, who brought a small satchel filled with shards she had found on the shore of Lake Erie and hoped Ms. Lambert could identify. The two puzzled over a piece of red glass, roughly two inches square, with a grid of regular bumps — a lens from a boat’s running light, Ms. Lambert concluded.

As they chatted, Ms. Hood remarked that she sorts her finds by color, “all the reds, all the oranges.”

“All the oranges?” A jeweler from a nearby booth pricked up her ears.

“The rarest color,” Ms. Lambert murmured. Pieces of orange sea glass can sell for hundreds of dollars.

If the association is firm against manufacturing sea glass, there is less agreement on “seeding” beaches with glass. Though some collectors already engage in the practice, Mr. LaMotte sees obvious safety and environmental problems with putting broken glass on the beach. Anyway, Ms. Lambert said, it might take 50 or 100 years for a piece of broken glass seeded on a beach to achieve the patina of sea glass. “Until then, it’s just trash.”

By Cornelia Dean.
A version of this article appeared in print on October 19, 2010, on page D4 of the New York edition.

Sea Glass Stoppers, Insulators and Bottle Bottoms

Fri, 19 Feb 2021 03:16:00 GMT

Today's sea glass collectors know that vintage and antique glass pieces can present a wonderful history lesson as well as an identification challenge. Most sea glass found currently during the twenty first century often originates from vintage bottles, antique serving vessels, and window glass. Historically speaking, the past 100 years have seen a mechanized bottle and glass manufacturing surge globally.

Yet many folks alive today have not had personal life experience actually utilizing antique glassware; carafes, bottles, tableware etc. That is because much of generation's-past glassware has been discarded and has even become much of today's sea glass. The good news is that with a fairly basic bottle glass and industrial glassware knowledge, much can be identified today.

By about 1910, bottle-works and glass factory production was swelling in many countries around the globe. Today, some of the most unique and rarest sea glass pieces have become what beachcombers love to hunt for and discover. Here's a compilation of some unique pieces, categorized into the following:

Bulbous Insulator Domes:

These large, beach-combed, frosty white electric insulator "domes" can be over 100 years old! Most have been tumbling for decades. We've found them individually after a lifetime collecting along remote, rocky, Pacific shores. The substantial and impeccably frosty sea glass tops are the thickest tops we've found. These were seen atop electric and telephone poles throughout neighborhoods and industrial locales since the 1840's. When each is turned over, we see the thick, wide threads typical to the underside of the insulator's heavy bulb of glass.

Bottle Stopper Finials:

The flat finials pictured here originate from the horizontal, disk-shaped top of a bottle stopper. These have been naturally snapped or tumbled from their stems by years along shore. The rounds can measure from about 1-3cm wide depending on their original stopper size and the ruggedness of shoreline they've tumbled along. On appearance, some modern day collectors might believe them to be contemporary, decorative "vase filler" pebbles. We guarantee they are not. See our video on Facebook for more*.

Antique Bottle Bases:

These fabulous, thick, and well rounded bottle bases were found years ago on rugged, pebbly shores. Most can be identified as antique, milk bottle bases, circa 1880 to mid 1900's. Historically, these were common in most homes for almost 100 years. The pieces pictured each measure at least 1cm thick x up to 3" wide and each has a tell-tale, concave divot in the center which is a common identifier of antique bottle glass bottoms. Unless the sea glass hunter searches at high tide after a strong storm, it is highly unlikely that pieces this size can be found any longer.

True Bottle Stoppers:

Here we see differing plugs, "corks", and bottle stops. All featured are in frosty white, but these practical inventions have historically been manufactured in a myriad of colors. Do you spot the "gravitating" stopper? It truly is the most unique piece here. In the shape of a bowling pin at bottom right, this stopper style was invented to work under natural pressure. It consisted of a glass plug with a flared knob at one end. A rubber gasket was placed at the end of the knob which sealed the contents by pressing against the inside surface of the bottle's neck and shoulder"

Bottle Stopper Stems:

This more colorful photo shows a collection of unique "cylindrical" pieces of stem-shaped sea glass. Each measures about 1.5cm long to about 3cm long, though we have found both shorter and longer relics of these. What are they? Each capsule-shaped sea glass stem originates from an antique bottle stopper. In fact all of them have been naturally tumbling along rugged, and mostly remote Pacific Coast shores for a lifetime which we estimate from late 1880 to about 1940. See their top, "finial" discs above.

*See the West Coast Sea Glass Facebook Page for more videos and Info.

Sea Glass Definitions and Terminology

Sat, 19 Dec 2020 20:24:00 GMT

Sea Glass and Beach Glass Definitions - By WestCoastSeaGlass.com - Mary Beth Beuke
The popularity of sea glass has exponentially grown over the past few decades across the globe. Collecting, studying, identifying and admiring these pretty gems has been fully embraced by ocean lovers and adventurers wide and far. There is a lot to be learned about sea glass. Let's start with accurate and descriptive terminology.

What is Sea Glass?
Sea glass is glass that is found along a sea or shoreline. Sea glass is fragments, shards, and remnants of glass pieces that, for a variety of different reasons, has ended up naturally tumbling along a shore or beach. How did glass end up on beaches? Humans around the world have been discarding refuse glass; tableware, bottles, window panes, dishes, etc for hundreds of years into oceans, lakes, from ships and onto beachside landfills.

True sea glass is glass that was historically discarded into, or made its way to the sea long ago and as a result has had its surfaces tumbled, frosted and conditioned by the elements of water, winds, tides and natural shoreline pebbles and sands. Want to find some yourself? For more accurate info on how to find original, natural sea glass click here: Where and How to Find Sea Glass

Seaglass : You may have noticed another, compound spelling for Sea Glass as Seaglass. This spelling is not the correct spelling of sea glass. There is no word seaglass in the English dictionaries. This alternate spelling has come about for a few reasons. With the rise of the internet and phraseology, folks often omit spaces between words.

For example the hashtag #seaglass is used most often on sea glass because the term #sea glass doesn't populate a search accurately online when separated by a space. Seaglass is not a noun but sea glass is the correct, descriptive term to describe glass from the sea. Though it is not the proper word to describe sea glass, seaglass is still used very much today.

Beach Glass : This phrase is used most often to describe glass found along lakes and non "sea" locations but that still has washed up on a beach. The phrase beach glass is the most common word used to distinguish sea glass from lake glass. Note that sea glass is often called beach glass interchangeably since sea glass is found on beaches. But not all beach glass is sea glass because not all beach glass was found along a sea shore. This is a terminological distinction that is important to some.

The Color "Sea Glass"
Over the past couple years, we have noticed the phrase sea glass attributed to a type of color. Is sea glass a color? True sea glass is found in every color of the rainbow but for some reason, the color "sea glass" or "seaglass" has been used to describe many shades of blues. Several cosmetics companies offer "sea glass" eye shadow - which turns out is a turquoisey blue shade. Just within the past 2 years, Axalta Coating Systems, a company that manufactures coatings for motor vehicles introduced an automotive color Sea Glass (notice the 2-word spelling) "inspired by Nature's waterways and oceans." The Valspar company also has a paint color entitled "seaglass". Though sea glass is not an official color, the phrase is very often used to describe a beachy, blues color palette.

Sea Glass Hunting with The Travel Channel

Sat, 03 Oct 2020 05:49:00 GMT

It was last October. My cell phone rang while I was road tripping, north through three states, heading home from the Sea Glass Festival. On the line was a producer from the Travel Channel who'd recently learned of the popularity and intrigue of sea glass. She asked, would I consider filming a show with them on "How to Cash-In on Sea Glass".

Flash forward another nine months the Travel Channel phoned me once again.

"We'd like to change the story a bit, do an adventure show, follow you in a kayak, interview you about sea glass history, color rarity, the love of collecting."

So I agreed to help with a show where we trek to a remote hunting spot, I do some sharing of the origin of pieces, talk about color and discuss why people love it so much.

I packed a suitcase, took a night flight to San Francisco, grabbed a latte and met "the crew" and huntin buddy, Charles, at a quiet island marina at 8am one summer morning in July.

Since I was unable to fly my big kayak on an airplane, we were given several spiffy new kayaks, donated to our adventure from a local outfitter. The boats awaited us on the marina dock. After hooking on waterproof microphones and sound packs, we ran through a quick show outline. Then all three kayaks floated away from shore and out into the vast, rollicking San Francisco Bay. The TV show's producer, camera crew and sound guy followed us in their zippy Zodiak filming us as we ventured out; around rocky outcroppings, under a bridge, then further into the deeper waters.

The entire day (I counted 11 hours) was spent on a warm beach; hunting, sharing, watching wildlife and sifting through our pieces. The show's host spent some extra time with me and some of my highly rare pieces which I packed along in my dry bag. We sorted them by color and laid them in our organic environment on a beach log.

The sun began to set so we kayaked back to the marina, gave goodbye hugs and sent the crew on to their next shoot. Though I'm not at all sure what footage they'll cut or keep, the show will air this winter.

Finding Sea Glass - Top Ten Tips, Where to Find Seaglass.

Sun, 01 Mar 2020 07:34:00 GMT

Coca Cola's One Hundred Year Old Bottles!

Wed, 11 Mar 2015 17:58:27 GMT

Coca Cola's One Hundred Year Old Bottles!

Coca Cola Magazine

Why Coca-Cola bottles are a cherished find for sea glass collectors.

For it's 100th year anniversary, Coca Cola is recognizing the beautiful, seafoam green bottle! And West Coast Sea Glass was interviewed for the back story of the bottle and how the sea glass journey tells the tale.

In the story, Mary Beth discusses the famous "Hobble Skirt" bottle and how, a hundred years later, pieces of it can still be found on our planet's beaches. At left is a highly smooth and frosty pile of beautiful seafoam green, "Coke bottle" sea glass.

To read the article, click here: Coca Cola Bottles and Sea Glass.

West Coast Sea Glass blogs

Sea Glass Marbles: HOW DO GLASS MARBLES END UP ON THE BEACH?

Peninsula Daily News - "Seeing Through Glass Eyes" by Diane Urbani De La Paz

Peninsula Daily News - "Seeing Through Glass Eyes"

by Diane Urbani De La Paz

February 5, 2013

Living on the Peninsula - "Sea Glass Colors Her Life" by Patricia Morrison Coate

Living on the Peninsula -

"Sea Glass Colors Her Life"

by Patricia Morrison Coate ﻿

Sequim Gazette - "From Trash to Treasure"

Sequim Gazette -

﻿ "From Trash to Treasure"

by Ashley Oden, Staff Writer

Shore Lines Newsletter - The View From Here

Shore Lines Newsletter -

The View From Here

North American Sea Glass Association ﻿

Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Sea of Color"

Santa Cruz Sentinel - "Sea of Color"

by Leah Bartos

Seattle Times - "Beachcombing for sea glass..."

Seattle Times

"Beachcombing for sea glass..."

Seattle Times

Coastal Living - "A Touch of Glass"

Coastal Living - "A Touch of Glass"

Parade Magazine - "A Shore Thing"

Parade Magazine - "A Shore Thing"

Parade Magazine

Seattle's "Evening Magazine"

Seattle's "Evening Magazine"

HGTV - "Bath Crashers" Show

HGTV - "Bath Crashers" Show

"Coastal Cottage in the City"

The Travel Channel - "Treasures of the Deep"

The Travel Channel

﻿ "Treasures of the Deep"

Treasure Hunter Show

Radio New Zealand - "Seaside Treasures"

Radio New Zealand - "Seaside Treasures"

New Zealand's Summer Night's Radio Show

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible, Shaped by Time and Tide"

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible, Shaped by Time and Tide"

Sea Glass Stoppers, Insulators and Bottle Bottoms

Bulbous Insulator Domes:

Bottle Stopper Finials:

Antique Bottle Bases:

True Bottle Stoppers:

Bottle Stopper Stems:

Sea Glass Definitions and Terminology

Sea Glass Hunting with The Travel Channel

Finding Sea Glass - Top Ten Tips, Where to Find Seaglass.

Coca Cola's One Hundred Year Old Bottles!

Coca Cola's One Hundred Year Old Bottles!

Coca Cola Magazine

by Patricia Morrison Coate

"From Trash to Treasure"

North American Sea Glass Association

"Treasures of the Deep"

New York Times "From Junk to Collectible,
Shaped by Time and Tide"