Sea glass - what exactly is it?

Sea glass , "seaglass" or sometimes "beach glass" is glass which is found on beaches after having been tumbled smooth and frosted by the ocean waves over an undetermined length of time.



Some of the glass I have found is very old, from an era when glass was far more widely used, and attitudes to the environmental damage caused by dropping litter into the sea were somewhat different to what they are today.

There is an infinite variety of colours of sea glass, and of course every single piece of sea glass is totally one off, having been on its own unique journey through the tides and currents of the ocean.

Some sea glass has travelled great distances, washing up on shores far away from where it was originally dumped, whilst other pieces have stayed trapped for decades in harbours, dropped by sailors and smoothed and tumbled by the tides whilst yachts and fishing boats go by.

Around the coast of Cornwall, we find lovely sea foam, aquas, pale greens, deep greens, and whites. These shades to me, represent the colours of the sea in Cornwall, and are the perfect choice to reflect the unique coast of my favourite place! Much rarer colours found on Cornish shores include blues, certain greens and deep aquas, and lavender.

Grey, pink, teal, black, yellow and turquoise and red (found once in about every 5,000 pieces), and orange (the least common type of sea glass), are all extremely rare colours. Rare sea glass in these colours is almost certainly rarer than diamonds.

The older pieces tend to be smoother, and rounded in shape, whilst the newer pieces wash up in all manner of squared or flat shapes. In jewellery all different shapes are used , and to great effect. The special 'glow' of sea glass, the way in which each piece catches the light in a different way, and the variety of subtle shades - pale aquas, frosted whites, palest blues to deepest colbalt blues and of course the array of greens all add to the magic and mystery of sea glass.

Recently my passion for genuine Sea Glass has led me to look for this increasingly rare commodity further afield.

I have managed to source some amazing examples of glass, some of which are at least 100 years old, that were discarded from an old glass processing in the North East of England, at Seaham in Durham. I have started to design around these pieces of glass, and I really love the pieces I've made.

‪#‎seaglass‬ ‪#‎ocean‬ ‪#‎treaure‬ ‪#‎mermaids‬ ‪#‎sea‬ ‪#‎glass‬ ‪#‎beach‬ ‪#‎coast‬ ‪#‎coastal‬ ‪#‎upcycled‬ ‪#‎recycled‬

The Cornish Green Revolution

Very exciting - Glasswing Jewellery is featured in this month's edition of Cornish World!

Recycled silver wedding rings

Recycled silver wedding rings

It finally happened! After much searching I found the US bullion dealer Hoover and Strong, whose Harmony metals range includes 100% recycled silver! Just the small matter of putting up with extraordinarily good customer service, swift DHL delivery and general fantasticness and friendliness that the Americans seem so good at, and my first order of recycled silver lay on my workbench.

The silver arrived!

It was no different to work than non-recycled silver, and the section was particularly nice, having a slightly different profile to my usual bullion. The rings looked lovely once they were made, hand forged using simple tools and elbow grease, and having the trademark Glasswing Jewellery hammered texture and warm soft polish.

My customers were over the moon with their rings, and by the look of the fabulous photos of their big day, with each other and the way the whole thing went.

The bride looked lovely, and she wore a pair of Glasswing stacker sea glass earrings.

Glasswing sterling silver stacker sea glass earrings with pale blue recycled beads

I was honoured to have made their wedding rings for them, and to be able to offer them environmentally responsible jewellery in line with their desire to have an eco wedding extraordinaire! Being keen photographers, they were both particularly pleased to know that as a lot of recycled silver comes from the photographic industry, that the metal in their rings may have once been involved in the production of photographic images - from who knows where?

Love Cornwall x

'Gwedren an Mor' literally means glass from the sea in Cornish, a language which has had a recent revival in Cornwall. This is a lovely chunky forged sterling silver circle hung with a purest white rounded nugget of sea glass. Available with 18 or 16 inch sterling silver smooth snake chain.

If you love Cornwall, sea glass and all things eco, this is the perfect pendant.

Beach life resumed?

Back to beach life, kind of...

Dare I say it? After approximately two weeks the rain seems to have stopped. Sunday greeted us looking like the kind of day you could trust your washing with. There's not been many of those lately. The gallons of water that have fallen out of the sky have left us with knee high grass and rampant triffids that were once nasturtiums, strangling our garden. I ventured out there this morning, followed by my peg bearer (the bean), and we surveyed our little jungle with awe.

A rare moment of quiet on the roof

There is one thing around here at this time of year which is the same come rain or shine, the manic (Herring) seagull activity. You don’t just hear a few gulls exchanging pleasantries, not like civilised bird folk. On the contrary, having returned to breed yet again (it's the same pairs every year) these brutes are noisy – in fact entering the garden you feel like some hapless screw interrupting yard-time at the seagull slammer. There are gull gangs on every roof, as far as the eye can’t see (but rest assured they can see you), squawking raucously. Presumably they are warning the posse about something they think you might do to them or their offspring should you decide to fly up to their turf. They just haven't got it yet - no wings. This continues for the duration, whilst you're pegging out the washing, or any other suspicious activity you are engaged in. If they think you look really shifty, or you are a dog, they’ll even dive bomb you for extra sport.

Making friends

So this morning, after running the seagull gauntlet, with the washing out and flapping happily in a sunny breeze, we logged on and checked the tide times. Then we headed off for a spot of beachcombing, after we'd had a tip off about a great spot for some serious sea glass pickings along the waterline. It felt so good to be leaving the house with buckets, spades and toast, rather than wet weather gear, and to see the kids go free range on the sand again at last.

Sea glass Bonanza!

Our sea glass haul was fantastic. My wrecking crew and I found some lovely pieces that really glow. I have learned that this 'glowing' effect is caused by the prolonged immersion of the glass in sea water (chemical changes), often over years, and of course, there is nothing like the beautiful smoothed and frosted effects caused by the constant tumbling in the surf, against rocks and sand. I can’t wait to get down into the workshop.

Here are some I made earlier, these can be found in my shop

Green Cornish Sea glass and recycled beads
sterling silver stacker earrings

Sad day

St Michael's Mount, Penzance Bay

On the face of it, today is just another rainy, windy Cornish Saturday in July, an all too familiar scene during a summer that seems to have given up and gone away. Despite the obvious lack of opportunities to re-establish summer beach life (see June post), the downturn in the weather at least isn’t all bad. It’s given us a chance to catch up instead on ‘home life’ – well housework anyway – cleaning, and ‘sorting stuff’ - like tackling (culling?) that pile of things the kids need mending (“Oh dear, just put it there love, mummy 'll fix it later”). There’s a kind of cosy battening down the hatches feeling around here, an excuse to watch telly during the day, and eat chocolate before breakfast . We quite like it really.

But actually, something monumental is in progress as I write this. With a sad sigh of resignation this morning I realised that the roof of the new flats being built at the bottom of our road totally obscures our sea view from the back bedroom window. I guess it could have best been described as a sea “glimpse” really – a tantalising line of blue (well, grey on a day like today), and the tops of a few masts in the quay car park, seen between the surrounding roofs. From my calculations of where everyone’s windows are, I reckon ours was about the only house in this historic terrace with its own “sea glimpse” at the back.

Admittedly, it wasn’t the kind of view you would sit at the window admiring with the morning papers and coffee, far from it, but I now feel I didn’t appreciate it enough - such is the pace of family life. It was however a lovely thing to behold on the daily weather check, almost the first thing we do – a triangular sparkle of hope – if it was clear and bright. It also occurred to me that the occupants of this lovely little granite cottage have enjoyed that tiny glimpse of Penzance Bay since this house was built around 1850.

We have been watching with interest as the dilapidated garage at the bottom of our street has been fairly rapidly transformed into new housing. As they pulled the Victorian red brick unit down, we were disappointed to discover that it was to be replaced by flats, rather than much needed family houses, but then relieved to learn at least, the building wouldn’t be over two storeys high. We were even more relieved when the façade started to be clad in gorgeous Cornish stone and the new build was shaping up to be a considerable improvement on what was there before. It never occurred to me that the building’s roof, now in situ in skeletal form, would hide our little glimpse of blue. Barely noticed by us, it is now gone forever.

Life's a beach

Praa Sands Kieran's photo

Sunshine on a rainy day

Summer beach life has been suspended for two days now, and given way to warm weather rain. The garden loves it, I love it, and the kids love it – as witnessed by all the people hanging out at Penzance bus station this morning, when the bean (two year old son) lay down in as many puddles as he could, as I poured his sleepy older sister and her toast on to the school bus.

There’s two distinct types of beach life here in Cornwall, at least for our family, put simply ~ winter beach life, and summer beach life. Winter beach life: mostly characterised by periodic blustery beach walks – brief, but strangely rewarding. These involve a sort of determined shoulder-hunched, hands in pockets, billow-trousered stride down to the water’s edge. Once there you pause for a moment, pained grin under a tightly tied hood, and take an exaggerated intake of ‘mmm fresh air’. Enjoying a rare moment alone as the kids play tug of war with a huge length of slimy seaweed, you look out to the wild white seas, and start to feel the wind penetrate your trousers. Pretty soon it's in to every other layer, no matter how ‘outdoorsy’, the goose bumps are rising up your whole body - the back of your head, then your cheeks, until fairly soon you are officially freezing. Defeated and shivering, having been on the beach for all of twelve minutes, you beckon the troops (who are so hot there’s a cloud of steam around them). You then fight the wintery gusts to get back up the beach to the car. Stuffing children, wet coats, arms, legs, and bits of seaweed in to the slightly swaying vehicle, you finally launch yourself in just as the wind whips the door shut.

Then you set off in search of a rare café that actually opens in the winter. If you’re lucky the rest of afternoon is spent enjoying mugs of hot chocolate and cakes, ears stinging, and feeling rather intrepid. (This beach life is particularly successful if experienced on occasions such as Christmas Day, when the cosy après beach rewards are extra delicious, and warming).

finding seaglass

Now, summer beach life is a different thing entirely. It’s a kind of ongoing state of being – both on and off the beach. When I lived in cities, if the sun came out, I always had the feeling that summer was going on elsewhere, without me, and the city sunshine was just a rather cruel reminder of what I was missing. Well, it was, and it's here! If we’re not off to Woodcraft Folk or Cornish Dancing or any of the other after school activities we seem to shuttlecock between each afternoon, then it’s off down the beach for tea .

There’s nothing quite like reading Biff and Chip in your school uniform, sitting on a body board, eating an egg sandwich. Or at least I don’t reckon there is, I don’t know, I’m not 6. But I know that would have been pretty cool when I was a kid.

Praa sands

Summer time in our place is measured by the progress in the washing cycle of swimming costumes and towels, and how dry the wetsuits are. The passing weeks are counted by the depth of the tan (dirt?) on the back of the children’s necks, the build up of sand in my bag, and how hard the skin on the soles of our feet has become. Buckets and spades start to breed, becoming lodged in almost every corner of the car, garden, bathroom….

I know it’s summer when my pockets are full of seaglass, which I do want (see below), and loads of other flotsam that I don’t, put there without me even noticing by smaller but equally avid beachcombers.

At weekends, in stark contrast to the winter, there’s no limit on where to go and what to do, the only problem is deciding which of our fabulous beaches to go to.

rockpool treasures

Actually, rain rain go away…I think the garden’s had enough now, we want to get down on that beach.

Oxidised silver and seaglass earrings.

Available in my Esty shop

Cornish spring blooms and other jewels

Over the past few weeks, I have been checking in, reading and admiring the fabulous blogs by fellow jewellery makers, beaders, and artists Etsy crafters all over the world.

I just had to start blogging! So finally, after my usual period of skillful procrastination, here is my first posting!

I've seen some wonderful pictures of spring flowers on other blogs, and bloggers' local landscapes waking up and beginning to blossom after the prolonged gloom of winter. For me, there's nothing quite like the natural world to inspire creativity. So I am launching my shiny new Glasswing Jewellery blog with some pictures of spring flowers from this tiny Cornish Peninsula, our home down at the foot of the UK.

The mild climate here in West Penwith is unique in the British Isles, and allows some really gorgeous subtropical plants to thrive. Palm trees line the streets, bananas grow around stately homes, and our gardens are blessed with exotic plants that would simply perish in the frosts further north. There's even a Cornish Palm!

Just a short drive from our doorstep is the wonderful Trengwainton Gardens, bisected by a crystal clear stream rushing under pooh stick bridges and over miniature waterfalls. To the right is a series of sheltered walled gardens and to the left are unusual subtropical woodlands currently carpeted with bluebells.

Once you reach the far corner of the gardens, there are the most beautiful views across the Bay.

The gardens are officially home to some of the finest examples of magnolias, rhododendrons, and camellias in the country.

I have never seen such gigantic magnolia trees anywhere else, some are so big, other trees grow halfway up their trunks. My neighbour told me the magnolia with the widest girth grows there, quite an achievement ~ and the fragrance WOW!

It was another gloriously sunny day yesterday, so we decided to visit the gardens. This time I grabbed my camera, a little point and shoot 6 megapixel Ricoh Caplio R4, my 2 year old son (who thankfully needs no persuading to walk around the gardens inspecting the flowers ), and most importantly enough money for a cuppa and cakes at the tearooms.

We had a lovely afternoon, and here are the pictures.

I hope you find these buds and blooms as inspiring as I do!

Some of them really look like fabulous pieces of jewellery!