Category: Sea and Beach Glass

Antique Bottle Collector’s Haven

North American Sea Glass Association

ANTIQUE BOTTLE COLLECTORS HAVEN

Antique Bottle Collector’s Haven

This is one of the leading educational internet sites for finding, buying, selling and learning about antique bottles. If you want to learn more about a particular category of bottle, or simply find out “how much is my old bottle worth?”, then this is the right place to go.

This site is very helpful for identifying sea glass shards which have distinguishable features on them such as pontil scars, rolled lips, etc.

Society for Historical Archeology websites for antique bottle identification: https://sha.org/bottle/

Sea Glass Match Made in Heaven

North American Sea Glass Association4 Comments

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!

UV Glass Mystery

North American Sea Glass Association

By Mary McCarthy, Education Chair, NASGA

UV sea glass flower frog

Recently at the Santa Cruz Sea Glass and Ocean Art Festival, NASGA Education Chair Mary McCarthy was on hand doing sea glass identification. A woman brought her necklace that included a UV piece with a unique curve. The size of the interior curve provided a clue: it was once a hole!

The source for the piece is a depression era vaseline glass flower frog. Flower frogs, nicknamed because they “sit in water,” feature holes that were used to hold flower stems. Often a two-piece item with a removable lid though sometimes made as one piece, water is placed inside to nourish the flowers. The identified vaseline glass, probably from the 1920s-40s was made with uranium and therefore glows under blacklight.

The Slowly Vanishing Gems

North American Sea Glass Association

by Ellie Mercier

While beachcombing last week, I began to reminisce about the frequent “aha moments” associated with the thrill of the hunt. Less than two decades ago, a morning stroll along my usual stretch of the Chesapeake Bay would undoubtedly yield a pail full of treasures, including smoothly tumbled bottlenecks, colorful shards of historic pottery, and cobalt Bromo-Seltzer bottles, which were manufactured in Baltimore between the turn-of-the-century and the 1970s.

However, my fond memories of bountiful finds faded as I pondered the gradual decline of sea glass carried ashore with each passing year. Although a variety of circumstances have contributed to the slowly vanishing gems, legislation passed in the mid-to-late twentieth century to protect the environment is largely responsible. Without a doubt, the state of the environment takes precedence over a mere hobby, and regulations designed to cleanup the oceans have certainly benefited global ecology and marine life. Yet ever since the 1970s, when the centuries-long practice of discarding refuse into the world’s waterways came to a halt, discovering sea glass has become increasingly more challenging. Probably the most drastic threat to the hobby was the abrupt closing of popular dumpsites adjacent to rivers and beaches, which cutoff an endless supply of bottles and jars that would otherwise have been washed ashore decades later in the form of desirable, frosty finds.

Also responsible for the dwindling number of tumbled treasures, although to a much lesser degree than environmental regulations, was the widespread switch from glass to plastic. As Digger Odell, the notable bottle author and collector states, “Plastic was the undoing of the glass bottle” (bottlebooks.com). Some ecologists believe that Tupperware, introduced in 1946, paved the way for the plastic bottle. Yet manufacturing bottles from plastic was not affordable until the 1960s, when high-density Polyethylene (PET) became available, and soon thereafter, plastic became preferred over glass due to the lighter weight and lower cost. In fact, only ten years after switching to cans, Coca-Cola began to use plastic bottles in 1970.

According to Odell, “The invention of PET plastic forced both Owens of Illinois and Continental Can Company to join the movement to plastic.” Michael J. Owens, of the Owens Bottle Company founded in 1903, is credited with the invention of the automatic bottle machine (ABM), and avid collectors are likely to possess numerous remnants derived from Owens bottles and jars. Incidentally, the company, which was renamed the Owens Bottle Machine Corporation in 1907, became the Owens – Illinois Glass Company in 1929 due to a merger and continues to produce over half of the world’s glass containers.

Although advancements in bottle production have had little impact on the existing quantity of sea glass, the same cannot be said for the quality of found treasure. When the era of hand-blown bottles came to end during the late nineteenth century, bottles lost many of their charming qualities, characteristics that boast historical significance and often provide clues to effectively date and identify finds. To illustrate, bottle bases that possess a pontil mark – a brownish or reddish residue caused by the removal of a punty rod, a long tool that was used to hold the hot bottle while the lip was manually formed – date prior to 1858, while shards that feature hand-tooled lips are associated with bottles produced between 1870 and 1910. Other clues that enable collectors to identify found treasure include color, evidence of embossing, and bubbles present in the glass. Conversely, all bottles manufactured after the mid-1920s are machine-made and reflect little variation. Finds derived from such objects are limited to typical machine-produced shades of colorless, amber, and green, and possess thin even mold seams that rise all the way to the bottle’s lip.

A steady decline in shipwrecks has also played a small part in the dwindling quantity of treasure swirling through the waterways. Again, alike environmental regulations, the correlation between shipwrecks and the quantity of sea glass is not at all intended to minimize the vital importance of safer ship travel. Credit for the decline in shipwrecks largely belongs to advancements in navigational technology, improved ship design, and international maritime legislation.

Historically, more ships have wrecked due to running aground on rocks, sandbars, or coral reefs, so state-of-the-art improvements in navigation have particularly increased the safety of ships close to land. Yet these very developments have also had a small impact on the quantity of remnants that wash ashore. Because glass and pottery do not float, treasure that escapes into the sea during a wreck rarely travels far from the point of entry into the water. Thus, unless a shipwreck occurs near the coast, it is unlikely that any potential finds would be carried to shore. However, more relevant to the dwindling supply of sea glass is the fact that close to three million wrecks remain undiscovered on the ocean floor, many of which are trapped in the depths of the sea, so the challenge for beachcombers is not a lack of shipwrecked treasure, but the inability to access the treasure.

As my search along the bay came to an end, a glimpse into my not-quite-half-full pail proved to be a cruel reminder of the circumstances that plague collectors. Feeling defeated, I began to ascend the steep wooden stairway to the top of the cliffs, all the while striving to invent a silver lining. Suddenly, a second glance into my pail generated an unexpected epiphany: alike other pleasures enjoyed in moderation, such as the occasional indulgence in a banana split, perhaps the case of the slowly vanishing gems simply warrants further celebration of the “aha moments.” With a brighter outlook, I reached into the pail to inspect my finds. My fingers first encountered assorted seashells, followed by a few prized pieces of driftwood and a sprinkling of shark’s teeth, all of which I looked forward to incorporating into projects. Eventually, my sandy paws made their way to the bottom of the bucket and retrieved two handfuls of smoothly tumbled, frosty gems, and despite the ordinary colors, I relished in the moment.

The Mystery and Allure of Cobalt Sea Glass

North American Sea Glass Association3 Comments

Updated from version published in spring 2014 edition of Shorelines Newsletter 

Ellie Z. Mercier

 

Sea glass collectors can certainly relate to the jubilant sensation that transpires when striking gold. Of course, not the sought after nuggets that lured settlers west during the Gold Rush of 1849, yet smoothly tumbled specimens of the finest quality, which actually have no resemblance to gold whatsoever but are dressed in the magnificently rich hue of cobalt blue.

Many enthusiasts would likely agree that discovering prized shards of ruby red, yellow, and purple – and especially those boasting coats of orange – are surely hobby-related milestones worth writing home about. However, although true blue finds are generally more plentiful than the shades ranked as most scarce, few collectors can resist the mysterious allure of cobalt blue sea glass.

Detecting glimpses of well-worn cornflower or royal blue gems ashore may generate well-deserved shrieks of delight on behalf of some beachcombers, while others may experience a stunned silence. Yet despite the differing external reactions to such feats, collectors are often left to ponder the magical significance of the cherished shade.

Represented as the first element in the ninth column of the periodic table, cobalt possesses an atomic number of 27 and is recognized by the symbol Co. The mineral was formally discovered in 1735 by Swedish chemist George Brand, who dispelled the myth that the element Bismuth was responsible for the rich blue color of glass. However, coba

lt compounds were used for thousands of years before Brand isolated the element. Scientists have traced the use of cobalt back to the ruins of the ancient city of Pompeii and to early civilizations of Ancient China, and the mineral was also used in Egyptian art and Persian pottery. Although prior to the 1940s, cobalt was used sparingly due to the limited quantity, the expense, and the difficulty to extract the mineral. Modern day collectors often associate the shade with luminous blue medicine bottles and cosmetic jars produced during the early to mid-twentieth century.

However, cobalt’s use as a coloring agent is not limited to glass, jewelry and ceramics; the compound is also used as a pigment for paint, ink and even cosmetics. Other applications of cobalt include the production of rechargeable batteries and the electroplating of cutlery and jewelry. Rather than an element found in nature, cobalt is a hard yet brittle mineral contained in the Earth’s crust and is a byproduct of the mining of other metals, including nickel, copper, silver, lead and iron. In its natural state, the color is a bluish-white shade, similar to gray. Cobalt salts are actually the source of the brilliant and permanent rich hue associated with the mineral. The majority of cobalt is mined in Africa, particularly in the Democratic Republic of Congo (or Zaire, prior to 1997), which extracts close to forty-percent of the world’s supply annually. Other sources are found in Canada, Brazil, Russia, China and Morocco. Also, researchers believe there is a vast source of cobalt contained in the ocean’s floor, although scientists currently lack the technology to extract the element. Interestingly, studies conducted by the United States Geological Survey conclude that cobalt likely exists in the shallow waters of the Hawaiian Islands (USGS).

Ironically, among the many interesting facts about cobalt is the mysterious nature of how the color’s name originated. Long ago, superstitious German silver miners believed that malicious spirits were affecting their health as well as stealing silver ore from the mines, and they referred to these spirits as kobalt, a derivative of kobold, which is German for goblin. Other fascinating facts surrounding the element include artist John Varley’s presumption that cobalt is an ideal substitution for the shade of ultramarine blue, which was widely used for painting skies. Another artist, Maxfield Parrish, was so well known for his superior cobalt blue sky-scape paintings that the hue is sometimes referred to as Parrish blue. Cobalt was also the primary pigment used in notable blue and white Chinese porcelain, originally produced in the late eighth or ninth century. Furthermore, cobalt is used to illuminate the cornea of the eye to detect corneal scratches and is used in the production of magnets, and Radioactive Cobalt is used to treat cancer. And oddly enough, cobalt is added to the diet of sheep in order to prevent disease and improve the quality of their wool.

The outward reactions of those fortunate enough to experience such a hobby-related milestone as striking gold – or rather, witness sudden brilliant glimpses of blue jump out from the sandy canvases before them – may differ significantly, but few sea glass collectors can resist the powerful allure of cobalt treasures, which in many aspects, are truly gifts of Mother Nature.

Photos: Ellie Mercier

  • Ellie found the frosty marble in the Abacos (her first marble find & she remembers that she was extra excited because Richard LaMotte shared that cobalt marbles are more rare than red marbles).
  • The bottle is from Ellie’s bottle collection – She also collects antique bottles.
  • Ellie found the jar lid in the Chesapeake Bay (almost a decade ago)
  • Yet most interesting is the image of the large cobalt shards, which Ellie found following the 2009 festival in Lake Erie…One of her customers took me combing along the river in nearby Conneaut, Ohio, where much slag glass was discarded in the 1960s by the GE Light Bulb Base Plant (these are huge, and the hue is extremely vibrant, alike bright violet).