For instance, the Finger Lakes region of central New York is known as “wine country” but one of its unexpected collectibles is the lake beach glass, sometimes still faintly bearing the etched lettering of its origin story, found with particular prevalence along the eastern side of Seneca Lake at Lodi Point Beach State Park.

Why? Old wine bottles: Castaways of vineyards past.

But rarer still are the ancient maritime castaways of ale and rum bottles from the Golden Age of Piracy (1650-1730), known as “pirate glass,” that wash up on the beaches along the Caribbean, North American eastern seaboard, West African, and Indian Ocean shipping lanes and trading ports.

Such Shanghai surprises tantalize collectors but not every dark piece tells the same story. Because, as Captain Jack Sparrow liked to say, “Not all treasure’s silver and gold, mate.”

Sea Glass Color – The Dark Side

Pirate glass is colloquially described as “black” but the intensity of what is more likely to be blue, brown, green, purple or red glass has been deepened by the addition of cobalt, copper or iron oxides; or during the glass-making process, the addition of iron slag, or coal and wood ash.

Why darken glass? To extend the life of products and their transport because darker glass protects valuable liquids (like alcohol or oil) from degeneration by sunlight.

The same properties added to deepen color also improve the structural integrity of the glass and make it less likely to break during handling and storage.

At sea, water may turn too contaminated to drink, but not ale or rum. Or a seafaring elixir of lime, sugar and rum often kept aboard in dark bottles as a survivalist measure against scurvy.

The strong, dark glass was perfect, beachcombing blogger Kirsti Scott notes, “For pirates on seafaring ships!”

Stones & Scallywags

Black joins gray, orange, teal, turquoise, red and yellow as the seven most difficult sea glass colors to discover. Pirate glass looks black but not all black glass is old enough to truly be “pirate.”

Well after the 17th-century heyday of pirate ships, early 19th-century decorative black glassware, known as Black Amethyst, was produced, as were black glass buttons to accent Victorian French fashion and, in more mundane industrial use, for light bulb insulators produced in plants like the General Electric and Vitrite Company in Ohio.

Slag Glass

Vitrite also happens to be the name of the slag glass often used as a dielectric, or electrical insulator, at the bottom of common light bulbs and consisting mainly of ground glass with “copious amounts of lead and manganese oxides, the latter being responsible for the dark purple color.”

In fact, Black Amethyst has become its own desirable sea glass collectible, with pieces more than 80 years old washing up along the Great Lakes and particularly Lake Erie, where these incandescent light bulb plants operated.

Still, other black beach glass pieces can be found downstream of defunct glassmaking factories, the remnants of bars or nuggets used to colorize clear glass. Also, blue-black glass traces to gin bottles from Holland, and red-black glass to Portugal.

While no less lovely to look at or bring home, these glass pieces lack the unique merits to claim provenance beneath the Jolly Roger.

Ahoy, Pirates

What helps qualify a piece of black sea glass as “pirate glass” is age (glass from the mid-17th century was hand blown) and location (albeit not all seafaring routes had to be Caribbean).

Pirate glass is noteworthy for its size, for the number of bubbles trapped inside its glass, and for its primitive density that (when held up to light) can reveal a “glow” along the edges of its true dark amber, olive green, or purple color. Older pieces may be so dense and opaque that light will not shine through them.

“Pirate ships were no strangers to the shores of the Outer Banks [of the Carolinas], and neither were their rum bottles. After hundreds of years of these bottles being tossed around by the sometimes extremely violent and vicious waters of Hatteras Island, these black chunks occasionally appear on the shore, to a beachcomber’s delight,” collector Kristin Hissong recounted in 2020 for the Island Free Press.

Knowing What to Look For

The trick is knowing what you’re looking for because pirate glass, by virtue of its dark color, blends almost too well into a beach’s natural background and can look a lot like any other average black stone.

“The first time I found a piece of pirate glass,” Kristin says, “I was going back and forth over one little shell bed gathering other treasures. When I first noticed the piece in the sand, I dismissed it as asphalt. It was about four inches long and looked like a black chunk of NC Highway 12.

“I didn’t know sea glass could be so big or so dark. But right before I decided to leave, I thought I might as well pick it up, and to my delight, it was a huge chunk of black sea glass.

“When I held it up to the light, it glowed a deep olive green and the glassmaker’s breath was caught in an air bubble inside the glass,” she noted.

“Ahoy matey, we found Pirate Glass!”

This story about sea glass color previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by L.A Sokolowski.

The post Black Pirate Sea Glass Color first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Walking along the beach, Allen McGhee isn’t just there for the beautiful ocean view. He’s on the hunt for sea glass and smaller beach stones that might make a nice piece of jewelry or a DIY sea glass art project. Brown and green sea glass are common, red and blue are more elusive, but all have the potential of being transformed into a recycled work of art. Tackling this beautiful craft may be easier than you think, especially with some helpful hints to get you started.

Preparing Cuttlefish Bone Molds

Cuttlefish are cephalopods like octopuses and squid. Cuttlefish bone makes an excellent material for creating molds for jewelry-making endeavors. Cuttlefish bone is inexpensive and readily available from jewelry suppliers and pet stores. However, it’s generally cheaper at pet stores, especially those that buy and sell it in bulk.

Cuttlefish bones have a hard side and a soft side. It’s important to inspect each piece carefully to make sure the soft side of the cuttlefish bone is relatively flat. You don’t want any large cracks or indentations that can’t be easily sanded out. These can detract from your design or cause the cuttlebone to break during the jewelry-making process.

Choose medium-sized pieces that are large enough to cut in half. McGhee likes to use a flush-cut saw to halve his pieces, although you can use a jeweler’s saw or a coping saw.

When cutting a cuttlebone in half, always place the soft side down and cut from the hard side. This helps prevent cracking or splitting. The cutting process will create a lot of dust, so be sure to wear the appropriate eye protection throughout the entire process.

You also want to make sure you’re wearing appropriate clothing since you will be working with an open flame. Clear your work surface so it is free of debris that can catch on fire, such as paper towels or cloth rags.

After the cuttlebone is halved, you must prepare it to be used as a mold. Sand the soft side of the cuttlefish bone to create a smooth contact surface that provides a perfect fit between the two halves. Some people rub the soft sides of the two halves together, but McGhee likes to use sandpaper. Lay the sandpaper on a flat surface and rub the soft side of the cuttlefish bone along the top of the sandpaper, not vice versa.

McGhee uses a circular motion. Rubbing back and forth can create a curved surface you don’t want. Both halves must be flat when finished. While the sandpaper helps create a smooth surface, it doesn’t detract from the natural growth lines found within the bone. These lines resemble wood grain and give each piece a unique texture.

How to Melt Silver to Make Jewelry – Simplified Steps STEP 1: Cut the cuttlefish bone in half STEP 2: Sand soft sides of the cuttlebone until smooth STEP 3: Blow off residual dust STEP 4: Carve a design into cuttlebone STEP 5: Bind the two halves together STEPS 6 & 7: Melt and pour the metal STEP 8: Remove the hardened metal jewelry piece

How to Melt Silver to Make Jewelry – Carving the Design 

McGhee carves all his designs freestyle by hand. This is probably the most creative part of the process and one he enjoys immensely as an artist. He creates each carving using a variety of wood carving tools and dental tools. Take care when carving your design because it takes very little pressure to etch the surface. You don’t want to go too deep and risk breaking the cuttlebone.

Carve your design into one of the halves of the cuttlefish bone and leave the other side unmarred. This is also when McGhee notches a place to insert a piece of sea glass or beach stone into the mold. Sometimes he incorporates more than one piece of glass or stone into the design based on what he envisions.

While he’s carving, he uses a manual air blower to remove dust from the surface of the cuttlefish bone so the lines of his design are crisp. Because he primarily creates pendants, he either includes some type of loop or opening in the design or drills a hole in the top of the finished piece for a chain. Once he’s satisfied with the design, he cuts some air reliefs. These are simply a few thin lines that radiate from the design.

“Air reliefs help make sure the melted metal gets all the way to the bottom of the mold,” said McGhee. “Without them, the metal may only fill the crevices of your design partway and it comes out incomplete. Since you can’t reuse the mold, you have to start over, but you can melt the metal again and reuse it.”

Next, sandwich the two halves together with the flat sides facing each other and bind them. McGhee likes to wire the two pieces together. He says you can also use a clamp but wire is easiest. No matter what you use, be sure the pieces are tight to ensure none of the scorching hot, melted metal leaks out the bottom.

Carve out a pouring cone at the top of the cuttlefish. The cone is a large indentation and should just meet the top edge of the design inside. This opening is where you’ll pour your melted metal.

Cuttlefish bone is a popular option for jewelry molds because it’s naturally resistant to the heat of melted metals, but the process does destroy the mold.

QUICK TIP: Don’t throw away your used cuttlebone. A cuttlebone mold isn’t reusable for jewelry-making, but it’s recyclable as plant food.

How to Melt Silver to Make Jewelry – Pouring  

McGhee prefers sterling because of its lower melting point. It’s easier to work with and more desirable than some metals. It’s also much cheaper than gold, making it a great metal when you’re learning. While he’s used bronze some, silver remains his go-to metal. You can buy silver castings, sheets and tubes from various sources, but you can save money and practice recycling by purchasing used silver. McGhee buys broken jewelry, sterling silver flatware and other odd pieces of silver from pawnshops or at garage sales. When he uses old forks, spoons, cups or other large pieces of silver, he must first chop them down to size. The pieces must be able to fit inside your crucible. Plus, smaller pieces of silver melt faster than larger ones.

All you need to melt metal is a propane torch, propane, a crucible to hold the metal while it’s melting and some borax to act as flux. McGhee uses the small 16-ounce camp stove replacement propane tanks because they’re easier to manage since they’re small and they’re relatively cheap at about $4 a piece.

When preparing to melt, estimate how much scrap silver you need to fill your mold.

It’s better to overestimate because you can always remelt any unused metal. Place the metal into a ceramic crucible and begin heating it with your torch to melt it. Add a small amount of borax as it heats and starts to melt to prevent it from oxidizing. Carefully swirl the crucible as the metal begins to melt until it’s completely liquified.

Once you have liquid metal, pour it into the pouring cone you created. Be prepared to pour the molten metal into your mold immediately. If it cools, it will harden again. To get a nice pour, you don’t want the metal to cool down even a little as it goes into the mold.

Once the liquid metal reaches the top of the opening, stop pouring. The metal usually hardens quickly but stays very hot to the touch for a while. The safest option is to let it cool inside the mold before opening it up.

McGhee likes to open the mold as soon as the metal has hardened and throw finished pieces into a container of water to cool down quickly. However, if you choose this route, be careful as the metal will be hot enough to cause a serious burn. Wear heat-resistant gloves to protect your hands.

WARNING! Cuttlebone puts off a strong odor once the hot metal is poured inside and singes the surface of the cuttlebone.

This story about how to melt silver to make jewelry previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story and photos by Moira K. McGhee.

The post How to Melt Silver to Make Jewelry first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Credited with some of our earliest graffiti (over 5,000 bawdy wall remarks and name tags have been discovered) Roman historians have yet to find a Claudius bug lectica est (“Claudius is a litterbug”), but glass inevitably broken in such ancient households may be among the earliest examples of such seaside castaways, where time and tides turned shards into strange gemstones. Into the first “sea glass.”

We’ve been smitten by this colorful byproduct of both nature and human civilization ever since. A 2016 blog by Lita Sea Glass Jewelry described this natural recycling process as “one of those rare phenomena that only occur when two worlds work together,” and collecting sea glass has only increased in popularity in the 21st century. Just this year, the travel blog Icelolly.com ranked beachcombing collectibles sixth among its Top 10 Most Popular Souvenirs (a less permanent commitment than #5, tattoos, yet more unique than #7, fridge magnets).

Whatever Your Imagination Whispers

Want to turn your lake and ocean shore souvenirs into permanent keepsakes? For not-so-crafty beachcombers and rock hounds, here are 10 fun and easy tips for how to display your finds, collected from sea glass lovers like Tesla Odyssey of LoveSeaGlass. com, décor doyenne Martha Stewart, and TikTok DIY (“You’re welcome!”) favorite, The Gooch.

“Whatever your imagination whispers, whatever your creative mind comes up with, sea glass is a material that allows you to turn it into reality. It works equally well with glass, wood, and on its own, making displaying it very easy, too,” says Tesla, whose 100% recycled glass creations can be seen on Instagram @loveseaglasscom.

1. Frames and Shadow Boxes: Sea glass pictures make wonderful home decorations on a wall or desk next to a computer. You can create pictures just by arranging/gluing various colors of sea glass, cultured glass and/or shells next to one another. Tesla recommends Etsy sea glass artist Cathy Shimmen, @cathyshimmenillustration, who has “really mastered this technique.”

Or… suspend your finds in a tray or box filled with clear cast, nonyellowing epoxy resin, bona fide fun from former Ringling Bros. circus clown and social media star, The Gooch. Here’s a link to one such project: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_gooch/video/7223090186190621998.

2. Jars: It’s okay, we’ve all had a jam-making/canning phase and yes, it’s hard to let good jars go. So fill them up and let beach glass shine. The more sizes and shapes the merrier.

3. Miniature Vials: Good things still come in small packages, as Tesla’s “flagship idea” of two types of glass working together, proves. Even the smallest sea glass pieces look stunning when capturing light through glass apothecary tubes like this https://loveseaglass.com/product-category/sea-glass-sets-in-vials/.

4. Message in a Bottle/Vase: We’re accustomed to colorful flowers arranged in vases, so why can’t sea glass share that spotlight? It’s not like water is going to hurt them. Or fill a vintage decanter for a pop of color behind you on those Zoom calls.

5. Glass Bowls: Think horizontal space and let a clear glass bowl or plate display your sea glass. The upside is that you can arrange and rearrange your glass as much as you’d like. The downside? Your cat can, too.

6. Treasure Chests: Memories attached to sea stones are as precious as Spanish galleon doubloons, so display their whimsical worth in a chest. Any chest will do. Once sea glass fills it, it will instantly look like discovered treasure.

7. Greeting Cards: Giving loved ones something handmade is always more special than store-bought, so why not make your own cards? With good card stock and a little glue, you can bring to life a vacation memory.

8. Christmas Ornaments: Why stop there? Want DIY gifts and ornaments for holiday decorating? Sea glass is an awesome material and glue gun-friendly. Turn green shards into fir branches or leaves, glued on Styrofoam cones, wreaths or balls. Use pastel colors to apply the same crafty idea to wedding decorations or, in “Pirate Glass” black, to dress up a spooky Halloween.

9. Votive Candles: Even Martha Stewart Crafts can’t resist a little faux stained glass added to a shelf or mantelpiece. Put a candle (white makes a fine backdrop) inside a clear glass votive. Put that inside a larger glass container and fill the space created between with sea glass plus – if you choose – coral, shells, sand dollars or other vintage glass pieces. Mimic the colors in a beach horizon at sunset with a gradient color scheme of blues and greens to pinks and purples.

10. Personalized Jigsaw Puzzles: If this was a take only photos, leave only footprints experience, no problem! Services like Amazon, CreateJigSawPuzzles, Im-A-Puzzle, PuzzleYou, Shutterfly, Staples, and Walgreens can help you make your own puzzle(s) from your sea glass photos. They will walk you through choosing your puzzle type and size, customizing your design, and uploading your photos to create sea glass jigsaw puzzles all ages can enjoy.

Let Sea Glass Reflect Your Joy

“Looking back, falling in love with sea glass was simply meant to happen,” says jewelry maker and sea glass artist Tesla Odyssey of LoveSeaGlass.com. When the Polish native moved from “mostly dark and rainy” Ireland to Costa Blanca she had no idea there was such a thing as sea glass.

“After I moved, I walked the beach a lot collecting seashells, rocks, and every once in a while, sea glass. I was amazed by what nature creates out of something we humans throw away. It made an impact. I fell in love with those small bits halfway between rock and glass.”

As soon as she could collect enough, she looked for “cool ways” to display it and show off the colors. She started playing with colors and different containers, asking herself what would happen if she had more colors to work with, beyond the commonly found browns and greens.

“I came up with my own process for making cultured sea glass, using real sea water, sand from the beaches of Costa Blanca, sea shells and some other items (that are my secret),” she grins. After a few months devoted to refining her method, she has created sea glass in nearly 30 different colors. “This allows me to pretty much ‘paint’ with sea glass. I can create any composition I want.”

Color also needs light. “When displaying sea glass, light is very important. You need to choose the right glass to display. If you want to bring a piece’s natural color out, use a white or transparent background so light can pass through. That will make it almost ‘glow’ on its own.”

You won’t need to do much to show off sea glass and its natural beauty. “Sea glass works great with rocks, seashells and wood,” Tesla encourages. “Pretty much anything you can think of. It’s a great material to create with, and extremely satisfying, too.”

Here’s to the souvenirs that make a house a home where others see glass through sea glass lovers’ eyes.

This article about DIY sea glass art previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe! Story by L.A Sokolowski. Photos by Tesla Odyssey

The post 10 DIY Sea Glass Art Projects first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.

Seashells, fossils, driftwood, and other natural artifacts are commonly sought treasures, but some searchers seek broken bits of glass. No, they’re not on a clean-up-the-beach crusade. They’re hunting for sea glass. Created by both man and nature, sea glass is one of the ultimate examples of one person’s trash being another person’s treasure. When collecting, it’s important to remember the rules and find out is it legal to collect rocks and sea glass in your area.

What is Sea Glass?

Sea glass, also called beach glass, is broken pieces of old glass naturally recycled by an ocean or a large lake. Old bottles, jars, and other trash made of glass carelessly discarded into oceans decades ago wash back up on the shore after being tumbled through the sand and surf. What’s left behind are smooth edged glass pieces that are almost stone-like but with a unique frosted appearance.

The best beaches for finding sea glass are those that were formerly dumping grounds.

Residents of many coastal towns simply threw their household garbage into the ocean. There are areas where appliances, cars, and even entire buildings were pushed over cliffs to the shore below with the idea that the ocean would wash the trash away.

When this didn’t work out as planned, citizens in places like Fort Bragg, California, had to physically clear their beaches of massive amounts of debris. On the plus side, what was once a dump is now a popular destination for sea glass enthusiasts from around the world. Glass Beach in Fort Bragg is probably the most famous beach for finding sea glass worldwide. The town even boasts an entire museum dedicated to sea glass – the International Sea Glass Museum.

A Dedicated Sea Glass Collector

Collecting sea glass has long been a passion of Susan Wilson, owner of Liliana Design in Scituate, Massachusetts (lilianadesigns.com). She has been collecting sea glass since childhood and later turned her hobby into a lucrative custom jewelry business.

“Walking the Cape Cod shores looking for that coveted blue piece was exciting and rewarding as a child. It still is! Here we have a case of trash to treasure,” said Wilson “When I found a piece of sea glass, I treated it much like a gemstone. My childhood imagination made me think of shipwrecks and lost bottles from treasure chests at sea. I was recently reminded that I would bring a pocket full of sea glass to school to share my treasures with my young friends. It’s not that different for me today. I still go out and hunt for sea glass when the tide is low and revel in each find, but today, I hunt with more knowledge of where the sea glass originated and this just adds to the intrigue.”

Sea Glass vs. Beach Glass

The primary difference between sea glass and beach glass is the body of water that created it. Sea glass comes from a saltwater environment, while beach glass comes from a freshwater environment. However, sea glass is found on a beach, so it wouldn’t technically be incorrect to also call it beach glass, even though diehard collectors may say you can’t use the terms interchangeably.

“To my knowledge, beach glass from lakes and rivers is slightly different from sea glass from the ocean,” Wilson said. “Sea glass has typically a more frosted appearance and little ‘C’ marks that are believed to be created by the action of saltwater, rock and sand. Beach glass seems to be more smooth and less frosted, probably because of the freshwater environment and less rugged shore from where they were made.”

Guessing Glass Age

Dating sea glass is a tricky undertaking.

However, long-time sea glass hunters have figured out various ways to guestimate the age of some sea glass pieces. Pitting and frosting are good indicators of age, as these traits require a certain amount of time in the water to materialize. Glass colors may help pinpoint the original age of a piece based on when specific colors became available or obsolete. Although there’s no conclusive way to pinpoint the exact age of glass fragments, it’s fun to try.

Wilson said the oldest pieces of sea glass she’s probably ever found were some of her gray pieces. These pieces had bubbles in them that indicated they were likely handblown and in the ocean for a long time.

“[These were] very frosted and round but also very thick and quite large, so I tended to keep them on a shelf,” she said. “It’s difficult to accurately date sea glass but I inherited a brass microscope from my parents who were scientists and I use that to help identify and date pieces. I find it fascinating and it satisfies the explorer in me.”

Sea Glass Colors

Besides age, sea glass collectors continually look for rare glass colors. Certain colors, such as green, brown, and clear/white, are the most abundant colors because they were commonly used for bottles, jars, and other glass containers. Colors like red, orange, and yellow are much more scarce.

Wilson says that by many people’s accounts, “the rarest colors of sea glass are orange, turquoise and red. Manufacturers didn’t commonly use these colors for bottles or dishware. These colors were hard to create in glass, so they weren’t highly commercially made.”

Black, teal and gray come next and are from old bottles, most likely pre-1900s when it was common to add iron slag to the silica for the black color. Gray was likely from a piece of leaded glass tableware or gray bottles of times past and teal from the combination of cobalt, iron, and chromium.

According to Wilson, much less common are pink, aqua, cobalt, cornflower and deeper purple pieces. Blues are the most popular among collectors but aren’t so rare as they came from more common chlorine bottles and perfume bottles as well as dishware. “They’re still much less common than the green, seafoam (older coke bottles), white, and brown pieces, which are from beer, beverage and wine bottles mostly.”

Common sources for popular colors include:

• Sapphire Blue – apothecary bottles

• Jade Green – Depression-era tableware or ornamental lampshades

• Purple – art glass or apothecary bottles

• Orange – car turn signals and art glass

• Red – car taillights

“I’ve found at least a few pieces of most colors of sea glass,” said Wilson. “I spend a lot of time trying to research their origins and love the history and discovery.”

She says the one piece of sea glass she covets that continues to elude her is a jewelry-quality, frosted true orange piece of sea glass.

“[Orange] is considered the rarest sea glass find,” said Wilson. “This is usually from old art glass or limited dishware and bottles. These are tremendously rare. I have a few small pieces that aren’t as frosted as what I use for jewelry so, to find a jewelry-quality piece would be fantastic!”

Creating New Treasures

Finding nice specimens of sea glass is only the beginning. Wilson and many other sea glass collectors have turned their love of sea glass into dazzling pieces of art and stunning jewelry pieces.

“I learned to silversmith when I was a teenager during summers on Cape Cod at the Artist Guild in Falmouth, Massachusetts,” she said. “It was there that I began to set unusual objects I found like wood and natural stone. It wasn’t until I had amassed a huge collection of sea glass in my adult years that I decided to get back into silver jewelry making.”

Wilson finds sea glass to be a natural fit for jewelry.

“I quickly discovered that sea glass was a natural match for setting in silver. The light reflects back from the silver through the sea glass when set with a silver backing and shines through the sea glass when drilled for pendants and bracelets providing a colorful glow. I also discovered I could use a lapidary technique with diamond drill bits to drill holes in sea glass.”

A Sea Glass Business

For Wilson, sea glass has become her full-time business.

“These fortuitous discoveries allowed me to leave my job in Boston and create my sea glass jewelry business. I soon discovered there were thousands of people out there that loved sea glass and were drawn to these elusive treasures set in silver and gold.”

Who knew bottles, jars and other trash made of glass left behind from indiscriminate dumping on ocean shores decades ago would become coveted items to beachcombers and collectors around the world? Low tide is generally the best time to search for sea glass on most beaches.

Looking for sea glass is like a treasure hunt. You never know what you’ll find. However, always confirm whether it’s legal to remove sea glass from the source with local authorities. Happy hunting!

This story about sea glass previously appeared in Rock & Gem magazine. Click here to subscribe. Story by Moira McGhee.

The post What is Sea Glass & Where to Find It first appeared on Rock & Gem Magazine.