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Joanna castor

What is Sea glass?

I thought that my very first blog on the page should really tackle the basic, what is sea glass? It never ceases to amaze me just how many people that have bought my sea glass jewellery, don't actually understand what sea glass is...and of course there was that time when I had a 'customer' get in touch requesting I make her a pendant out of, what was clearly, a broken Budweiser bottle. Suffice to say, not all glass found on the beach is 'Sea glass'.


In its most basic form, sea glass is discard glass that has been left to break, tumble, ground and rounded by the churning of the sea. Most of the glass we collect from the beaches is from old bottles that have found their way into the sea. The Victorians were fabulous fly-tippers and lots of sea glass is as a result of these Victorian glass dumps, God Bless them and their disregard for the environment! Other glass sources are from ship wrecks, the most famous being the ones from the Spanish Armada....I will do a blog about this another time, as it deserves a blog of its own! The once harsh and sharp edges of the glass are softened, the surface frosted and the glass develops a salty layer. Every piece of glass washed up by the Ocean is technically 'sea glass' but you can imagine the spectrum of how rounded sea glass becomes is highly varied, from extremely well rounded and frosted pieces (as featured in the photo below) to the very rough smashed, lightly tumbled Budweiser bottle. In my opinion jewellery grade glass is the very smooth rounded glass, often this has been in the sea for decades, centuries even. The rest I would usually class as craft grade.

Sea glass stack pictured on the beach at Seaham, Durham
Sea Glass stack using Seaham Sea glass

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