The Amazing Beauty behind Sea Glass Rings
Sea glass or beach glass has grown tremendously in popularity for use in jewelry, crafts,and home decor. However, using sea glass in this way is not a new phenomenon. Historians have found forms of sea glass jewelry dating back thousands of years. The renewed interest in sea glass has led to an explosion of people combing the beaches to see what they can find. However, they often don’t actually know what they have found or why it is special.
Most sea glass can be identified based on the color of the glass. The smoothness and shape of the glass can reveal information about the age of the glass.The most common types of beach glass are white, green,and brown. They can be found on virtually any beach throughout the United States. These are the most common because they come from bottles used for wine, soda, and beer.
Olive green glass and a very pale amber colored glass are unique, but not quite rate. Light greens, light blues, and dark amber are considered rarer than the olive green and pale amber. The really rare pieces are cobalt blue, lavender, aqua, lime green, red, orange, yellow, grey, teal, pink, and milk white.
The cobalt blue glass dates back to when medicines and poisons came in these blue bottles. Lavender glass came from bottles made with manganese, which was no longer used after World War I. Aqua beach glass likely came from a seltzer bottle from the early 1900s.
The condition of the beach glass is also important. The smoother the glass is,the older it is. The glass is smoothed by being tumbled in the water and sand, so the more time the glass spends in the water, the smoother it will become.
Most pieces of broken glass that end up in the water start out being triangle because it is natural for glass to break in straight lines creating many little triangles. However, the older the glass is and the smoother it gets, it often takes on a more oval shape, sot he more oval the glass is, the older it is. Oval glass and marbles take hundreds of years to form and are very exciting finds for beach glass hunters.
Another factor that can make sea glass more exciting is any kind of markings or words that will enable you to identify exactly where the glass came from. In addition to helping with identification, markings also add to the appeal and uniqueness of specific pieces.
It is the variety and uniqueness of sea glass that makes it ideal for use in jewelry. Sea glass rings, sea glass necklaces, sea glass pendants; they are each unique in their own way. Even if you have two sea glass rings with the same color and size of sea glass in it, they aren’t going to be the same. You aren’t going to find two identical pieces of sea glass because each piece is reflecting its own journey in the water.
Due to the unique nature of sea glass, it is not possible to mass manufacturer sea glass rings with genuine sea glass. These can be purchased from individual jewelers and artisans.