Sea Glass: The Search on the Shore

Part of the sea glass hunting elite, Nancy and Richard LaMotte are finding the treasures they covet harder to come by

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    Nancy LaMotte's eyes are a clear blue-green, the color of antique Coca-Cola bottles, but brighter. She scans the sand at her feet: gritty knots of seaweed, smashed oyster shells, driftwood – wait! There, by that barnacled log! She bends to pluck a perfect turquoise lozenge of sea glass; while she's reaching for it, she also spots an arrowhead. "Oh, look," she coos. Though her smile is modest, the double whammy is a bit much for me, since the only treasure I've spotted so far on this Chesapeake Bay beach is a grimy scrap of plastic.

    For what it's worth, LaMotte and her husband, Richard, are among America's sea glass hunting elite; she makes sea glass jewelry in their Chestertown, Md. home, he—vice president of an environmental analysis firm by day—is the author of a seminal sea glass book, and together they run Sea Glass Publishing, which prints a whole product line for beachcombers, from pocket journals to posters. Chances are that neither of them would stoop for a single one of the brown and white shards you found this summer and then forgot about in a fishy-smelling jar in your garage (The LaMottes keep their collection in the garage, too, but in a custom-made cabinet of color-sorted cafeteria trays). No, they hold out for purple, teal, black and—rarest of sea glass shades—orange.

    Being a sea glass expert is a serious enterprise. The LaMottes can recite Depression-era tableware patterns, glass-making recipes, and the saltwater pH levels needed to give sea glass its frosted look. And they don't go hunting on any old swimming beach—collectors of their caliber kayak, snorkel, rappel down cliff faces and hike lava floes to reach premium beaches, which they pinpoint by consulting prevailing wind patterns and even the cycles of the moon, to hit the tides exactly right. They also study maritime history to determine which shipping routes and resorts were popular in the late-1800s, when much desirable glass was made. The private beach that Nancy and I searched for an hour, for instance, is south of a bayside amusement park where patrons likely dropped glass into the water from the 1870s to the 1960s.

    Yet even with these resources—and remarkably keen eyesight—at their disposal, the LaMottes and their colleagues have noticed an unsettling trend in recent years: "Sea glass is getting harder to find," Richard told me earlier that day in his kitchen, fingering his favorite foggy jewels like a pirate deep in his plunder. Collectors across the country have noticed supplies dwindling along many of the traditionally bountiful coastlines: Northern California, parts of Hawaii, the southern shores of the Great Lakes and the East Coast north of Cape Hatteras. Increasingly, serious collectors are leaving this country to canvass glassier shores.

    "People are traveling to Spain and England," says Mary Beth Beuke, president of the North American Sea Glass Association, a coalition of sea glass collectors and artisans. At the group's annual festival, to be held this year on Columbus Day weekend in Lewes, Del., Beuke will be delivering a lecture entitled "To the Ends of the Earth," describing the lengths modern enthusiasts must go to improve their collections. She is in the process of planning her own trip to Greece.

    Running out of "mermaids' tears" seems impossible, and a little sad, like running out of seashells. But one man's collectible is another man's trash, in this case quite literally. Sea glass is essentially pretty litter, broken bottles and jars abandoned on the beach or heaved overboard years or decades or even centuries ago, then smoothed by the ocean's movements. The Caribbean is a great place to find shards from case gin and Dutch onion bottles, for instance – they're rubbish from old rumrunners. Several storied sea glass hunting grounds, like Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, Calif., are actually former town dumps.

    But attitudes toward oceanfront property, and litter in general, have changed dramatically since the Glass Beach dump closed down in 1967. Americans' newfound reluctance to hurl junk into the sea has limited the supply of fresh glass, and with the advent of mass-market plastic, glass is a much less popular packaging material than it used to be. There have been sweeping efforts to clean up existing beach garbage, even the collectible kind, and restoration projects meant to save eroding coastlines frequently involve importing tons of sand that is typically glass-free. (Though occasionally, it must be said, this works in collectors' favor: A recent beach renewal in Lewes unearthed scads of valuable black bottle pieces from the Severn, a cargo ship wrecked in the 1770s. Guess what sea-glass festival attendees will be doing between lectures?)

    Finally, some prime beaches are simply picked over. Extreme sea glass hunting is admittedly a niche hobby (the LaMottes tell of a woman who patrols a particularly fruitful stretch of sand 365 days a year) but pocketing a few choice pieces here and there is a standard summer pursuit for many Americans. Collectors guard their beach locations ever more jealously against the stiffening competition. As glass gets scarcer, prices rise—treasures like the Shard of the Year, chosen at the annual festival, can be worth hundreds of dollars—and with the growing sea glass jewelry trade there's also a market for faux sea glass, pieces that have been mechanically tumbled or chemically treated. These fakes are anathema to diehard beachcombers like Beuke and the LaMottes and other top-level collectors, who formed their association a few years ago in part to "educate" consumers about the virtues of the real thing.

    The LaMottes, for their part, try not to let the controversy take the fun out of hunting. There are other types of seaside prizes for the taking–they are particularly proud of the fossilized bison teeth they found not far from where I went looking , not very successfully, with Nancy. Amateurs like me can take heart in the fact that this year's premier hunting days are still ahead of us (Nov. 13th and Dec. 12th, according to the Perigean spring tides) but it's probably true that "the best collectors will always find pieces," as Nancy likes to say. She and Richard have already searched Bermuda and Scotland and will continue to cast a wide net—there are beaches in Italy, and particularly in Venice, home of the Murano glass factories, that they can't wait to explore.

    But they won't forsake their native shores. In their garage, alongside their favorites, the LaMottes have buckets full of sea glass pieces that are not quite smooth or rounded enough to be worthy of display, but which could be quite lovely after a few more years in the water.

    They're thinking about going down to the beach and throwing them back.


    Nancy LaMotte's eyes are a clear blue-green, the color of antique Coca-Cola bottles, but brighter. She scans the sand at her feet: gritty knots of seaweed, smashed oyster shells, driftwood – wait! There, by that barnacled log! She bends to pluck a perfect turquoise lozenge of sea glass; while she's reaching for it, she also spots an arrowhead. "Oh, look," she coos. Though her smile is modest, the double whammy is a bit much for me, since the only treasure I've spotted so far on this Chesapeake Bay beach is a grimy scrap of plastic.

    For what it's worth, LaMotte and her husband, Richard, are among America's sea glass hunting elite; she makes sea glass jewelry in their Chestertown, Md. home, he—vice president of an environmental analysis firm by day—is the author of a seminal sea glass book, and together they run Sea Glass Publishing, which prints a whole product line for beachcombers, from pocket journals to posters. Chances are that neither of them would stoop for a single one of the brown and white shards you found this summer and then forgot about in a fishy-smelling jar in your garage (The LaMottes keep their collection in the garage, too, but in a custom-made cabinet of color-sorted cafeteria trays). No, they hold out for purple, teal, black and—rarest of sea glass shades—orange.

    Being a sea glass expert is a serious enterprise. The LaMottes can recite Depression-era tableware patterns, glass-making recipes, and the saltwater pH levels needed to give sea glass its frosted look. And they don't go hunting on any old swimming beach—collectors of their caliber kayak, snorkel, rappel down cliff faces and hike lava floes to reach premium beaches, which they pinpoint by consulting prevailing wind patterns and even the cycles of the moon, to hit the tides exactly right. They also study maritime history to determine which shipping routes and resorts were popular in the late-1800s, when much desirable glass was made. The private beach that Nancy and I searched for an hour, for instance, is south of a bayside amusement park where patrons likely dropped glass into the water from the 1870s to the 1960s.

    Yet even with these resources—and remarkably keen eyesight—at their disposal, the LaMottes and their colleagues have noticed an unsettling trend in recent years: "Sea glass is getting harder to find," Richard told me earlier that day in his kitchen, fingering his favorite foggy jewels like a pirate deep in his plunder. Collectors across the country have noticed supplies dwindling along many of the traditionally bountiful coastlines: Northern California, parts of Hawaii, the southern shores of the Great Lakes and the East Coast north of Cape Hatteras. Increasingly, serious collectors are leaving this country to canvass glassier shores.

    "People are traveling to Spain and England," says Mary Beth Beuke, president of the North American Sea Glass Association, a coalition of sea glass collectors and artisans. At the group's annual festival, to be held this year on Columbus Day weekend in Lewes, Del., Beuke will be delivering a lecture entitled "To the Ends of the Earth," describing the lengths modern enthusiasts must go to improve their collections. She is in the process of planning her own trip to Greece.

    Running out of "mermaids' tears" seems impossible, and a little sad, like running out of seashells. But one man's collectible is another man's trash, in this case quite literally. Sea glass is essentially pretty litter, broken bottles and jars abandoned on the beach or heaved overboard years or decades or even centuries ago, then smoothed by the ocean's movements. The Caribbean is a great place to find shards from case gin and Dutch onion bottles, for instance – they're rubbish from old rumrunners. Several storied sea glass hunting grounds, like Glass Beach in Fort Bragg, Calif., are actually former town dumps.

    But attitudes toward oceanfront property, and litter in general, have changed dramatically since the Glass Beach dump closed down in 1967. Americans' newfound reluctance to hurl junk into the sea has limited the supply of fresh glass, and with the advent of mass-market plastic, glass is a much less popular packaging material than it used to be. There have been sweeping efforts to clean up existing beach garbage, even the collectible kind, and restoration projects meant to save eroding coastlines frequently involve importing tons of sand that is typically glass-free. (Though occasionally, it must be said, this works in collectors' favor: A recent beach renewal in Lewes unearthed scads of valuable black bottle pieces from the Severn, a cargo ship wrecked in the 1770s. Guess what sea-glass festival attendees will be doing between lectures?)

    Finally, some prime beaches are simply picked over. Extreme sea glass hunting is admittedly a niche hobby (the LaMottes tell of a woman who patrols a particularly fruitful stretch of sand 365 days a year) but pocketing a few choice pieces here and there is a standard summer pursuit for many Americans. Collectors guard their beach locations ever more jealously against the stiffening competition. As glass gets scarcer, prices rise—treasures like the Shard of the Year, chosen at the annual festival, can be worth hundreds of dollars—and with the growing sea glass jewelry trade there's also a market for faux sea glass, pieces that have been mechanically tumbled or chemically treated. These fakes are anathema to diehard beachcombers like Beuke and the LaMottes and other top-level collectors, who formed their association a few years ago in part to "educate" consumers about the virtues of the real thing.

    The LaMottes, for their part, try not to let the controversy take the fun out of hunting. There are other types of seaside prizes for the taking–they are particularly proud of the fossilized bison teeth they found not far from where I went looking , not very successfully, with Nancy. Amateurs like me can take heart in the fact that this year's premier hunting days are still ahead of us (Nov. 13th and Dec. 12th, according to the Perigean spring tides) but it's probably true that "the best collectors will always find pieces," as Nancy likes to say. She and Richard have already searched Bermuda and Scotland and will continue to cast a wide net—there are beaches in Italy, and particularly in Venice, home of the Murano glass factories, that they can't wait to explore.

    But they won't forsake their native shores. In their garage, alongside their favorites, the LaMottes have buckets full of sea glass pieces that are not quite smooth or rounded enough to be worthy of display, but which could be quite lovely after a few more years in the water.

    They're thinking about going down to the beach and throwing them back.

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    I live in New Jersey right now, but was born and raise in Puerto Rico, I was over there this summer and found a lot of sea glass very beautiful pieces, I love sea glass hunting, love it!!! Thank you for sharing this, I really enjoyed!!

    Posted by Nidya on August 10,2011 | 12:00 AM

    oh my goodness i am glad to know it is adictive. i am a glassaholic. yes obssession is mild. i have 100's of pounds of good stuff i mean balls of blue the size of golf balls. i have found so many bigs hunks old of pink, orange, yellow, teal , purple and tons of white green and brown. i am up and checking beach sometimes with a flashlight its so competative any more. no such thing as a private beach. lake erie gllass is the best way nicer than ocean glass i have both but hands down the colors are much nicer and very old from lake erie. glas rocks love it love it great website thanks to the lomottes

    Posted by dorahemphill on July 26,2011 | 08:31 PM

    Just back from a vacation in Barbados. Not only did I find a few nice jewelry quality pieces, four are 'black' glass from really old bottles.

    I went sailing with a friend and he let me seed the ocean about a mile off the beach with a bucket of glass shards.

    Hope some collector will find the smooth pieces 50 years from now when they wash up on the shore.

    Bajanna

    Posted by Bajanna on July 20,2011 | 05:52 PM

    I found a piece of "Vaseline" uranium glass today. I love looking for sea glass and making it into fine silver jewelry. My name is Shannon Down By The Sea if anyone is interested.

    http://www.facebook.com/pages/Shannon-Down-By-The-Sea-Mermaid-Tears-Sea-Glass-Jewelry/104117746317261

    http://www.etsy.com/shop/ShannonDownByTheSea

    Posted by SHANNON RUSSELL on July 12,2011 | 08:37 PM

    Just returned from Nova Scotia with my daughter and we found approx 2000 pieces of sea glass, on one particular day we found 962 pieces in about an hour. I live in NC and cant wait to get to the shore to search. It is very addicting!! Love it!!!

    Posted by Trish on July 12,2011 | 12:42 PM

    My grandson found a piece of ses glass on Long Beach Island.

    It is clear white with the letters W M D clearly visible.

    Can you identify the bottle or maker?

    Posted by phyllisbuziak on June 30,2011 | 09:18 PM

    Perhaps one of the reasons that sea glass is becoming rare, or harder to find, could be that people have 'bucketsful' of sea glass that should have been left to tumble naturally in the waves and sand for a few more years. Many photos I've seen of sea glass, still shows jagged edges or big chips. If only it had been put back instead of removed from the beach, then ...

    Posted by Virginia on May 7,2011 | 11:29 PM

    Hi everyone.My daughter has a 1976 sea glass coke bottle.It is clear but very beautiful.Does it have any value? There are no chips whatsoever.Email me donp62@comcast.net.Thank you.

    Posted by don prairie on January 20,2011 | 07:36 AM

    I have a free form sea glass tree on three panels 42"x22" each. Ply wood has been cut so that the tree is viewed from both sides, allowing ligt to flow through. I do not know the artist nor the value of this beautiful work of art. Would appreciate any input.

    Posted by Miki Straughan on November 4,2010 | 12:21 AM

    It is so exciting to read stories from your sea glass collectors. I started picking up the glass about 10 years ago, but didn't realize exactly what I had. I marveled at the soft edges, crooks and crannies of broken bottle pieces. Somehow, even at that time, it became my secret treasure. I had displayed it among my lovely shells in various placed throughout my home throughout the years, sometimes just stopping by to hold a piece or two. Today, I am sea glass crazy. A long as I find a piece here and there along our NC coasts, I won't leave the seashore till darkness forces me in. You get it in your blood and no matter where you are, you become a radar for beautiful glass. I'd love to venture to some more secluded areas. Wanna share your secret places with me? That's okay, I'd probably be reluctant to do so as well. Gotta love those after storm effects when the ocean gets all churned and angry. God bless you ocean..bring it on...your beach nuts are waiting. Thanks to those of you who make this site possible. Love Ya for it..Norma in NC

    Posted by Norma Murphy on November 2,2010 | 07:14 AM

    Beachcombing on the Silver Coast of France is my favorite pastime. Some days I find a bit. Other days I feel as though I'm walking through the Sahara. Brown glass is an unusual find here as opposed to America. My favorite is the teal glass.
    The French don't even have a word for "sea glass".

    Going out again in the morning.
    Wishing I had an ultralight :)

    Lisa
    silvercoastseaglass.etsy.com

    Posted by Silver Coast Sea Glass on September 21,2010 | 03:15 PM

    I can't imagine being at the lake and not hunting for beach glass/stones. I have been doing it since I was little with my Dad who suddenly passed away two years ago today. I still feel he is with when I am there. I live close to Erieau On. and I get excited about what I will find everytime I go. It is nice to see comments from others like myself.

    Posted by Dana on September 7,2010 | 05:15 PM

    Fabulous finds on the north shore of Lake Erie! Hope to get out there this weekend!

    Christina
    www.seaglassrocks.com

    Posted by Christina on August 27,2010 | 03:46 PM

    The ocean at the Jersey Shore (Ocean Beach III to be exact) has been pretty rough this week, lots of swells and rips. Between early morning and early evening low tides, the sea glass has been plentiful. In the last 2 days (some morning and evening runs) I have found almost 200 pieces. My neighbor went out this morning (I didn't and could kick myself) and found 188 pieces which I counted. We have found beautiful blues, light and cobalt, a variety of greens, thick white/clear and of course brown!! I can't wait till tomorrow!!

    Posted by Joni Frascati on August 17,2010 | 10:58 PM

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