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Sequim Gazette - "From Trash to Treasure"

Jun 18, 2021

Sequim Gazette -

"From Trash to Treasure"

by Ashley Oden, Staff Writer

April 15, 2013 -

For the next three months, Beuke’s extensive collection of sea glass will be on display at the Museum of Arts Center of the Sequim-Dungeness Valley. Some people say her collection is one of the best in the world, Beuke said. “And it’s all right here in little old Sequim.”

Beuke has been collecting sea glass and making jewelry from it all her life. She started as a young girl living on the Oregon Coast, but it wasn’t until about five years ago that she decided to advance the hobby to a professional level. “People kept wanting jewelry as Christmas presents and placing orders” she said. “So, I started West Coast Sea Glass and haven’t slowed down since.”

Sea glass is rising in popularity worldwide, according to Beuke. “It’s quite fashionable on the East Coast, but here on the West Coast a lot of people still don’t know what it is,” she said.

Put simply, sea glass is any glass found on beaches along oceans and large lakes that’s been tumbled and smoothed by water to create smooth pieces of frosted looking glass. “It takes nature hundreds of years to tumble a piece of glass,” Beuke said. “And it’s a dying resource.”

It’s a dying resource because people no longer throw garbage into the ocean like they did hundreds of years ago and not as many products are made from glass either; she explained. “There will come a day when people won’t be able to find sea glass anywhere anymore.”

Some colors are already harder to find than others. Beuke made a copyrighted rarity chart to help beachcombers assess their findings. Orange, red, yellow and turquoise are the most difficult colors to find because not very many manufacturers have made bottles in those shades, she said. Pink, black, teal green, gray and UV lime are also pretty rare, whereas white, brown and emerald green are three of the most common colors of sea glass, according to the chart.

“It is extremely difficult to find certain colors: you can search a lifetime and never find them,” Beuke said. If you have an orange piece of sea glass – true orange, not honey amber; which is from a bear glass – you most likely have a fine piece of Czechoslovakian glassware.”

She’s spent days – and even nights – on the beach searching for orange and red sea glass and has only handfuls of the rare gems, Beuke admitted.

Red sea glass is accounted only once for every 5,000 pieces found, according to Wikipedia.org. And it’s predicted that in 20 years red sea glass will be worth as much as a large diamond, the Web site stated.

Putting color aside, the peninsula is home to some unique pieces of sea glass simply because of its logging history, Beuke said. “Where there’s been logging traffic from the land to the ocean there’s going to be glass, and that’s something that’s pretty unique to our area.”

Above all, beachcombers must respect beach laws and regulations, Beuke reminded. “That means not trespassing onto private property or illegally removing any items from the shoreline,” she said.

Sea glass isn’t illegal to remove from the beach because it’s considered “garbage,” Beuke explained. “We are simply cleaning up the beaches.”

So many of her dreams have come true already, but Beuke is still working hard toward the future. “My dream is to have my own museum or studio spot that’s headquarters to the North American Sea Glass Association,” she said. Beuke is president of the association and will speak at the Ocean Shores Beachcombers Festival in March.

I have people call me from all over the world to see my collection and I want to be able to allow them to view these precious pieces,” she said. “My home is not the right place for that anymore.

Beuke is also working on writing two books: one that uses sea glass as a “wonderful life metaphor” and one that teaches children about sea glass and beachcombing.

Putting her finger on exactly why she’s passionate about sea glass isn’t easy, Beuke admitted. “Sea glass in itself is so enchanting and a little mystical… I guess like looking at a piece that’s a couple hundred years old and imagining what it once was.”

By Mary Beth Beuke 17 Jun, 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. And 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 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 boxes of ballast marbles would surely be lost to sea only to wash 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
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