Living on the Peninsula -

"Sea Glass Colors Her Life"

by Patricia Morrison Coate

May 31, 2006 -

“It probably started when I was a little girl, growing up on the coast of Oregon,” Beuke recalled. “I went to the beach with my brothers and sisters and we called it ‘treasure hunting.’ I’ve always had sea glass, but I really got into it 10 years ago and I had no idea I had really one of the best collections in the world.”

Not content merely to amass tens of thousands of pieces in a rainbow palette, Beuke began educating herself on the what, where and how of sea glass.

“I can tell in a second the difference between real and tumbled glass and I’m guessing most people can’t because it takes a lifetime. You can’t mimic it in a (rock) tumbler,” Beuke said.

Despite her knack in spotting bits of beach jewels – on her best day she pocketed 1,500 pieces over 12 hours with a friend – she learned that sea glass is a scant commodity and one that has history and intrigue to it.

“I can look at a piece and tell you all about it,” she said, palming pieces in red (train/boat lantern glass or a ruby goblet), orange (fine European tableware), dark purple (an early electrical insulator), pale green (a bottle stopper), dark green and brown (soda, beer and liquor bottles). “I can look at a piece and tell you how many decades old it is. One hundred, even 50 years ago, they’d haul stuff out on boats and dump it into the water. On the North Olympic Peninsula, whole schooners would be loaded with refuse, set adrift and burned, so now we have ‘bonfire glass’ where one piece has melted into another.”

With a fellow aficionado, Lindsay Treiber, Beuke developed a rarity chart for West Coast Sea Glass. From the rarest to most common, the colors are orange, lavender, red/cranberry, yellow, turquoise, pink, grey, jade green, olive green, teal, lime/seafoam green, conflower blue, cobalt blue, aquamarine, emerald green, amber brown, chocolate brown and white/clear.

Beuke still thinks of searching for sea glass as treasure hunting, but now the colorful chunks she collects often become treasures for admirers worldwide. Through her cottage-industry company, West Coast Sea Glass Jewelry, she fashions and sells rings, earrings, pendants, key chains, cufflinks, hair barrettes, charm bracelets, necklaces and anklets on the international market via the Internet and at shows nationally. As she notes on her Web site at www.westcoastseaglass.com, “It is 100-percent genuine, naturally sculpted by the waves, sand, winds, tides and currents of the ocean…” She also sells some of her most dynamic sea glass finds to high-end jewelers who craft one-of-a-kind pieces in gold.

Sea glass collecting, buying and selling has an international following and Beuke shares her knowledge through photos and phone calls, often helping less experienced collectors identify their pieces. Others recognize her expertise in the field and she’s a sought-after speaker at sea glass seminars.

Beuke didn’t realize she had one of the premier collections of sea glass worldwide until she read Richard LaMotte’s definitive book, “Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems.” The eminent sea glass expert, despite having amassed his own study group of 30,000 pieces of sea glass, had no true orange orbs in his collection, so he had to borrow some to be photographed for his book (2004, Chesapeake Seaglass Publishing).

< Older Post Newer Post >

Sea Glass Marbles: HOW DO GLASS MARBLES END UP ON THE BEACH?

By Mary Beth Beuke • June 17, 2022

HOW DO GLASS MARBLES END UP ON THE BEACH? There are several theories about why historical glass marbles occasionally wash up on the world's beaches, even today. Reason #1 : In the late 1800's an inventor named Hiram Codd designed a glass soda bottle that used a marble as the stopper at the top. Similarly, the Japanese glass Ramune bottle was also sealed-up with a marble stopper; many times blue ones! These two bottle styles were used in the US and around the world and likely account for a great many of the beach marbles that have been found (and can occasionally still be found) along shorelines globally. When a bottle was discarded, often into the sea, the bottle would break against the rocky shore and the marble might stay intact and tumble for years and likely decades! Historically, marbles were like playtime currency for children! Finding a bottle, and breaking it to get the marble out was quite common. Reason #2 : Decades ago marbles were one of the most popular toys used. Young children played dozens of marble games; Taw games, marble races down a beach slope and marbles were even used in sling shots as ammunition. The shore is usually the lowest spot in any beach town or community. Toy marbles roll downward, down stream, down sewer pipe, down runoff trenches, culverts and more. Gravity accounts for many a marble journey toward shore. Additionally, the beach made a great place for target practice. Some children played games by floating a "moving target" piece of driftwood off shore then shot their marbles out into the water toward the target. Some seagulls often became the moving targets also. The resulting marbles which landed just offshore, one day washed beachward. Reason #3 : For a span of years, post-industrial-era in the US, marbles found along the railroad lines are most likely the result of dumped over freight-glass. The 3/4", orb-like pieces were shipped all over the country for use in the manufacture of fiberglass. It is also believed that glass marbles may have been used for ease in rolling freight and cargo around. This only explains the sea glass marble locale when a rail yard or railway is situated near or along a waterfront. Reason #4 : If you are beachcombing near a coastal landfill site, you will have more luck in finding a coveted sea glass marble. Painters often dropped a handful of marbles into a can of paint to help mix the batch. When the paint was used up and the can was tossed into the city dump (often times the dump was the sea-bluffs at the edge of town) the salt water and ocean's natural biodegrading ability decomposed the paint can over the years. The marbles became what was left and each washed around upon the shore until individually beach combed. Reason #5 : Ship's ballast? For hundreds of years, ships and cargo vessels were loaded with heavy items to help provide ballast. Marbles may have provided this weight inexpensively and effectively when the boxes or barrel containers were transported in the hull of a ship. The Marble Collectors Society of America writes "Clay marbles were made in both Germany and the US. It has been reported that clay marbles were used as ballast in the keels of ships that sailed to America from Germany and then were removed and sold in the US". In the Puget Sound where the tides move fast and the inlets can be narrow, ballast is key to keeping a sailing vessel upright and true. It reminds me of the white water rafting trips my family goes on down the remote Hell's Canyon in Idaho's back-country. The heavier, more weighted-down boats fare much better in the turbulent rapids than the lighter rafts. Ships along the Pacific Ocean's rough shore also needed this kind of weight to help with navigability. Yet should they be smashed upon the rocks, the barrels of marbles would surely be lost to sea only to roll up on shore decades and sometimes even centuries later. "A sea glass collecting friend of mine, Stephanie in the Virgin Islands messaged me multiple times with a story of how, one blessed day, she found more than just one or two marble finds. She was trying to solve the mystery of why the marbles ended up there on the beach. She was hiking along a shore that was lined with steep, sandy cliffs, One afternoon she discovered one or two marbles up higher on the beach bank, above that day's high tide line! Then she discovered another that led her up, away from the water's edge to yet another. She kept walking and continued to find them! Eventually she found herself staring directly into the cliff face. With no tools, she had nothing but her bare hands, she decided to dig into the clay-like cliff's side. In just a couple scoops of sand, she said, several marbles came tumbling down, right out of the cliff wall itself at about waist height! Stephanie did some research and believes that they may have been poured out there years, and years before she even visited that beach. She'd heard early stories of the rum runners during the late 1800's that carried barrels on sloops back and forth throughout the Caribbean to fill with alcohol. She shared stories of how the barrels were oftentimes filled with heavy items prior to their pickup so that the ships had heavy ballast." - The Ultimate Guide to Sea Glass At West Coast Sea Glass, we occasionally let go of one of our beautiful, antique sea glass marbles. They can be found on this page: Collector's Rarities

West Coast Sea Glass

Genuine Sea Glass Jewelry and Bulk Sea Glass