About Moonwave Sea Glass
Moonwave began innocently enough. Living in a Seattle suburb and having grown up on the central California coast, I really missed the ocean. My husband, Keith, and I decided to go to the beaches of the Puget Sound to see if we could find any sea glass I could collect in a glass jar on the kitchen window sill. Just to bring a little ocean energy into our home.
Keith, being an artist with a design degree from Cornish College of the Arts, couldn't keep himself from wanting to use these beautiful glass gems to create art. The more we learned about sea glass, the more respect we gained for it and how it came to be where we found it.
We hope to share some of that respect with you on this page, examining the various colors, their rarity and level of antiquity, as well as how all that glass got in the sea in the first place.
We are proud members of Sea Glass Lovers NING community network.
yours in sea and sky ~ diane and keith
Colors of Sea Glass
A lot of research has gone into identifying the origins of particular shards of glass, based on their color, shape, patterns and density.
We are grateful to C.S.Lambert (Sea Glass Chronicles, Whispers from the Past) and Richard LaMotte (Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gems)for their research and published works on the history of sea glass, from which we referenced for some of the following notes.
Sand, lime and soda are the basic ingredients that go into making glass. Minerals and metals such as manganese and gold have been added to create the various colors washing up on the sand. As with any art, glass-making has evolved a great deal over time, and the color of the glass can tell us about its chemical composition and from there we can fairly confidently tell the time it was originally created. The value of a piece of sea glass is in part determined by its color.
We invite you to explore the rarity of colors by viewing this beautiful Sea Glass Rarity Chart, Copyright - WestCoastSeaGlass.com
Sea Glass Rarity Chart
The most common colors are browns, greens and white, but there is a lot of regional influence in the availablility of colors. What is rare in one area may be abundant in others.
From a light yellow amber to a dark almost-black, brown glass is found in a wide range of colors, the most rare being golden amber, once used for spiritis, bitters and patent medicines. It is an old color, but still widely used. Dark brown bottles were popular in the 1800's, mostly for liquor. The glass was made thicker then, so it's easy to tell a very old piece.
Greens come in many hues including forest, lime, kelly, jade and others. Dating them is a bit more difficult because so many are still in use today for wine and beer bottles. Older green glass will be patterned or textured in some way and in general: the thicker, the older. Here's some pretty greens we've found:
White sea glass, believed to be the most common worldwide, brings it's own magic as it turns frosty and sparkly from the abrasive, salty sea. A fat, well-rounded and perfectly frosted piece with no chips can still be a pretty proud find. Depending on the amount of sunlight exposure and the mineral make-up of the original glass, white glass can change to various shades of yellow, pinks and lavender.
Other more common colors include aqua, lavenders and a pale "seafoam" green.
Before the turn of the century, aqua glass was in common usage for soda, beer and waters. One familiar source is the Ball Mason jar. We find a lot of this color.
During World War 1 the world's supply of manganese was depleted and glassmakers switched to selenium. It was the magnesium in clear glass, when exposed to the sun, that created the purple glasses ranging from pale lavender to deep purple. True purple is quite rare.
A lot of the "seafoam" glass comes from the old, ribbed Coca-Cola bottles made between 1915 and 1975. In addition, many soda and beer bottles were produced in pale green until clear glass took over. Most pieces in this color will date pre-1970.
Much more rare are the oranges, reds, grays, yellows and pinks. A dark cobalt blue is uncommon to find in large pieces. We find a lot of small chips.
We know that cobalt blue glass dates back to the time of Tutankhamen, as it was found in his tomb, but most found on todays beaches come from old medicine bottles or more commonly Phillips Milk of Magnesia and Noxema bottles. A lighter shade, referrred to as cornflower blue, uses a lesser dose of the cobalt oxide additive. Another blue, teal, can be safely assumed to predate 1900. We've found several teal pieces.
Orange is the most rare color of all. A lack of demand and the challenge of producing a consistent color discouraged its use. Used mostly for tableware in the early 1900's, you may find a piece of orange sea glass in one of every 10,000 pieces.
A highy coveted color, ruby red comes from the Victorian era, used mostly for lanterns and decorative pieces. It's scarcity is due to it's main ingredient: gold. In the 50's Schlitz beer used a deep red glass for its bottles. Lighter shades indicate more modern glass made with selenium, cadmium and copper - much less expensive to make.
Gray is a smoke-colored glass that was mostly created when trying to make clear glass. These pieces may date to the nineteenth century and you may be lucky to discover a shard in one of every 2,000 pieces of glass you collect. Some gray may come from tinted automobile windows. There is also a gorgeous brown-gray color we've found quite a few pieces of.
Yellow glass hasn't been used much, with the exception of tableware and ornamentals. You might find one in every 3,000 pieces of glass you collect. A yellow-green, sometimes referred to as citron, was used more during the depression.
Pink was mostly used to make depression glass tableware and these pieces are easily identified by their etchings. Selenium was used to produce the pink color. Pink pieces caused from sun exposure to clear glass is more commonly found and will date around pre-1930. Below is a beautiful piece we found. It was a hallelujah moment!
How it Got There
We love the irony of what once was trash transformed by the sea into treasure. It’s even more fitting that glass started out as sand. Decades, even centuries later these gem-like shards are brought in with the tides and deposited on the beach, having acquired a frosted patina and smooth and polished edges as a natural result of tumbling with the currents, waves, rocks and sand of the ocean. Mother Nature has embellished litter into art.
Sea glass is also known as beach glass or mermaid's tears. It was said in days of old that mermaids would cry every time a sailor drowned and the glass washing up on the beach was their tears. Each sparkling gem as unique as a fingerprint, evokes thoughts of its origins. A dense brown piece of wine bottle declares its age, as today we use a much thinner, lighter glass. I like to imagine who might have drank that wine?
Where does all this glass come from? Origins include coastal cities, which used to dump their garbage into the ocean. These ocean dump sites were common until the dawn of environmental awareness. Cargo spills, shipwrecks and storm-battered coastal communities contribute as buildings are tossed into the sea. Picnics and parties have taken place along beaches for as long as man has been around, and man has left his trash behind to be dragged out to sea with the receding tide. Litter laws, the proliferation of plastic products and recycling practices have changed all that and sea glass is becoming more and more scarce. One book's subtitle refers to sea glass as "nature's vanishing gems" (Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gem's by Richard LaMotte).
We only use the finest sea glass for our art, looking for shards that have been transforming in the ocean for many decades so they are strong and have good form. Some people take newer glass off the beaches and have it machine-tumbled to attempt to reproduce the beauty of naturally-aged shards. In fact, some of their "beach glass" has never even seen the beach as they simply break the beer, soda and other bottles from their own home consumption and tumble those! We guarantee that our glass is authentic sea glass, tumbled only in the ocean tides.
