Summaries and excerpts from
the book Pure Sea Glass will be added here periodically, along
with additional information for the benefit
of our readers. If you have a question, feel free to
send it to us using Contact Us.
To view excerpts
of the book, click here.
The initial spark for this
book came in March of 2001 while I was visiting a good friend at his
new retreat in southeastern Missouri. We were beginning a trek
down the Black River, and when I mentioned
that my wife made sea glass jewelry he noted we should produce
a book on sea glass, one that would be suitable for every coastal home. Shortly thereafter my
wife was asked to speak about her jewelry at a seminar at the Shrewsbury Institute in
Kennedyville, Maryland. Months
later a sea-glass collector from Hawaii emailed us looking for
advice on finding ideal spots to collect sea glass, and my lengthy
response prompted her also to urge me to write a book. During
small exhibitions I kept hearing the same questions over and over of what was this sea glass originally, and
how did it develop its luster. This prompted me to probe much deeper
into the glass industry. Seeing the awestruck faces of my wife’s
customers when they were viewing our collection of sea glass confirmed for me that a book really had to be done. If for no other
reason, to share some of these stunning pieces with
the masses before they were
off the market.
Great effort went into every detail.
Especially time-consuming was determining the rarity scale based on the thousands
of sea-glass shards
we had collected over the years. Before finally putting the sea-glass
rarity scale in its final order we realized we had amassed
a study
group of close to 30,000 pieces of sea glass. While most of
the collection was retrieved from the shores of the Chesapeake
Bay,
we also had studied pieces from Spain, California, Florida,
North Carolina, Delaware and even from Ohio’s Lake Erie.
Still we had not a single piece of true orange.
On page 67 you will see an extremely rare piece of orange nestled
in shells. It came from Lake Erie and was provided by a
friend of our photographer. To validate our claims
on sea-glass rarity by color, we then consulting the history of the bottle and glass
industries for two years, gathering information from experts
and
studying a vast number of books and internet references. Sea-glass collectors may find the
rare colors more frequently than one noted in the "uncommon" catagory,
but it is highly unlikely that many will find shards
identified
in the category we designated as "extremely rare".
In May of 2002, while our research was underway,we went to an opening at
the Carla Massoni Gallery in Chestertown, Maryland.
Just after entering I saw two dramatic images of beach stones and seashells by photographer Celia Pearson. I pointed them out to my wife, who responded immediately, “You have to speak to her!” When I
introduced myself to Celia and started to explain that we were beginning
a book about sea glass, her response, too, was immediately positive: “Please let me shoot it!” Just minutes
from home and in just minutes of conversation, we had found a great match of skills for this project. We found many more good matches
over the following years of this journey, but there is no question
that Celia’s brilliant talent helped make Pure Sea Glass worth every minute
of work.
