Our Story

The West Coast Sea Glass Story

Who's Who

Mary Beth

Our Story

Every single piece in the West Coast Sea Glass collection is natural, ocean tumbled, historic sea glass. We are the beach combers and the trained silversmith jewelry artists. The story of our company all started along the beaches of the Pacific NW which have long been our home. Mary Beth grew up in Oregon and visited the beach all her life.

Lindsay grew up along the shore near the Washington ferry docks. We ended up moving 6 houses away from each other and shared the same beach along the Puget Sound. Though we'd both beach combed all our lives, it was there that West Coast Sea Glass was born one sunny day. The West Coast Sea Glass line began with handpicked sea glass from rugged Pacific beaches combed all the way from South in Mexico to Alaska's islands and more. But now our collection spans most continents, most oceans and many countries in between.

With two individual lifetimes of beach combing behind us, we combined our collection in 1998 and discovered we'd amassed a vast, rare compilation that, to date, we've not seen the equal of. We've shown our collection in galleries, museums, at beach combers' events and more. Our jewelry is now found in dozens of galleries and shows around the world. The West Coast Sea Glass studio, with a majestic Olympic Mt. range view out the back and the wild Salish Sea waters in front, has become a haven of creativity and beauty. From there we craft with care, your jewelry from pieces, hand picked by us.

A few years later we added fabulous help in the main office; Teresa has been the shipping mermaid at West Coast Sea Glass. Now she does much more than shipping and helps with almost all of our jewelry compilation and creation.

So, West Coast Sea Glass is a combination of things. We are a full service sea glass jewelry studio yet we also house a collector quality exhibit of rare and special pieces. We sell a vast line of sea glass jewelry and occasionally we sell our extra stock of bulk sea glass to those who love to create also. We offer both drilled sea glass and drilling services when you buy our pieces and we are happy to create custom orders as well. We also sell photos and posters and other sea glass related gifts.

Life In The Pacific Northwest

The Pacific Northwest corner of the United States is a beautiful spot to live, play and enjoy the rugged outdoors. Hiking, kayaking, snowboarding, crabbing and whitewater rafting are important parts of our way of life, but sea glass hunting is the real draw for us. With its rich history in timber industry transport coupled with European and Asian shipping trade traffic, the NW shores of the U.S. have a few sea glass riches left to be uncovered. There is a difference with NW sea glass. Our Northwest tides and currents can move dramatically in a day's time and our beaches are rough and rocky. Those factors & the Pacific's uniqueness combine to nicely condition our sea glass.

What Makes West Coast Sea Glass Unique

We are unique at West Coast Sea Glass! We go out of our way to keep track of what beach and body of water we find each piece on. This enables us to tell a bit of each gem's story and journey. We are also unique because we are serious sea glass hunters and trained jewelry artists. This gives us a special level of knowledge and experience plus a one of a kind, hand picked collection. With two lifetimes of serious hunting & perfecting the delicate art & science of beach combing, we offer a high quality array of sea glass in every color and from many parts of the world. We are genuine people, less interested in creating notoriety for ourselves than we are about happy customers with whom we share our sea glass passion.

The Sea Stars
You may have noticed a beachy little creature that shows up in our stories, designs and photos quite often. The sea star (often called a star fish) is a consistent symbol of strength to the artists at West Coast Sea Glass. The life of the sea star is much like the beautiful sea glass journey. You see when the sea star loses a limb, it doesn't limp along or die. Rather, the creature possesses the ability to regrow and rejuvenate what was lost. Much like sea glass, this reminder of new life is encouraging and inspiring to us.

Our Environmental Commitment

West Coast Sea Glass cares about the planet and is running an ever increasing, ecologically responsible company. Aside from providing the customer with a highly recycled, original product - genuine, beach combed sea glass - we follow a rigid, 9 step plan (below) to keep our company leading the way toward a "greener" pursuit.

Above & beyond environmental regulations: Each and every industry has its own set of environmental regulations. We've explored ways to go green by implementing the basics and going above and beyond to make sure our company stays a good, working example of today's regulations.
We have an environmental management plan: Our workplace and craft area are energy efficient and streamlined to impact the environment as little as possible. We recycle and reuse as much of our packaging and supplies as we can. Many of our metals are from recycled settings and from companies that limit mining.
We're buying green supplies: The West Coast Sea Glass business has begun the process of "greening up" our supply purchases. Going green is on the increase across the globe. So we always seek out the most ecological products we can find, first. The packaging supplies, jewelry metals and office products (even light bulbs) are more ecological.
We're conserving energy: When we leave our workroom(s), we turn off printers, lights, computers, monitors, speakers etc. The team here are coffee heads. But after 9:30AM once everyone's arrived and coffee'd up, we shut the coffee maker off - otherwise it would stay on until noon.
We participate in shoreline stewardship programs. We belong to the North American Sea Glass Association, a non-profit organization that donates thousands of dollars annually to shoreline restoration groups and beach cleanups.
We're preventing pollution: Every person produces waste and so does every business. So, it's important to limit our individual and collective pollution. For example we limit our postal runs to cut down on gasoline emissions. We used to make a special trip into the post office daily. Now we've consolidated that to just three times a week when one employee (who has the a least polluting vehicle) takes the packages to town on her way home from the studio. With that one change, we are conserving almost 9 gallons of gasoline a month.
We've created a greener marketing strategy: We use the internet and email invites more and printed flyers and mailers less. When we do print, we use soy ink and recycled paper stock. We belong to a group of thirteen local artists and where instead of each of us putting out our own individual flyer about the same event we put out one page which features each of us.
We're recycling wastes: Most companies already do this so we are not special. But we do believe that nothing is too small to recycle. Whether it's paper, cardboard, little plastic baggies, even metal scraps that can be remelted and reused. Everything is used and reused when possible.
We're building green: Any time we begin a new, larger project from scratch, including buying equipment, furniture and storage space etc., we make sure that we start with recycled or renewed products and reusable products made from sustainable sources; lighting, printers, appliances, even shelving.