By Mary McCarthy, NASGA Education Chair

It’s always fun to find a match of a sea glass find with a fellow beachcomber in another part of the world, and of course to discover the history of our finds.

I often have many beachcombed finds on my phone; there are up to 10,000 photos stored there at any given time “for sometime.” One day on Instagram I saw a post from Jody in California that she found a beautiful sun-purple figural bust:

It immediately reminded me of something I found that I had taken a photo of, but hadn’t posted yet because I hadn’t identified what it could have been. It had an odd block shape at the corner that had confused me, the seeming headless perfect companion to hers:

I recognized Jody’s as a powder jar lid, “Wendy” by Fenton and sent her a photo of the original:

So, I did what I always do in a case like this, I consulted the “man upstairs,” from whom I have learned all things sea glass identification and apprenticed for years.  I texted the photo to Richard LaMotte, founder of the North American Sea Glass Association and author of Pure Sea Glass, who doesn’t live far from me and in fact once tried to rescue a wayward kayak paddle off a shoreline for me!

Richard said he thought my find was a Victorian glass bookend, something that hadn’t occurred to me and something I had never seen before. Now I had an answer and could post the headless find.

Jody and I are hoping to unite the headless sea glass couple at an upcoming sea glass festival in California to get a photo and unite their coast to coast matchup!