‘Jewels of the Sea’

Festival Organizer, Nancy Perkins was interviewed by Mary MacKay of The Guardian in July, 2008 The article ran across Canada. For folks on Prince Edward Island it served as a rallying cry for a festival.

Sea glass seekers enjoy the thrill of hunting these treasures-from-trash gems

by MARY MACKAY, The Guardian (Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island)

Treasures of the sea might be most associated with sunken ship cargos of gold bullion and precious jewels.
But for some, what was trash is now treasure.
Over time, sometimes more than a century, discarded glass objects have been tumbled and tossed in the surf till they’ve transformed into precious jewels of the sea that avid collectors enthusiastically seek. These frosted gems are sea glass.
“See, we’ve only been down here half a minute and we’ve already found something,” longtime sea glass hunter Nancy Perkins of Highbank exclaims from a secret shoreline spot somewhere along the Northumberland Strait that is awash with tumbled treasures.
On this day, she and sea glass-picking pal Dot Campbell of Little Sands are keen to make the most of the low tide time to add to their treasure troves.
“It’s very historical. It’s quite the passion for people, and all ages can do it. You can have a grandparent walking along the beach with a grandchild — they both can do it and they both love it,” says Perkins, who has put her personal sea glass collection, “Mermaid Tears Sea Glass Exhibit,” on display at the Wood Islands Lighthouse. “The exhibit has been a big hit,” says Perkins, who explains that sea glass is often referred to as mermaid tears.
Sea glass is a big hit with Richard LaMotte.
“I call it adult Easter egg hunting . . . ,” laughs this Maryland-based author, who has sold more than 60,000 copies of his book, Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature’s Vanishing Gems.
“I think people are naturally attracted to unusual colours in glass in general . . . . In many cases, they’re vibrant pastel colours, the type of colours that people find soothing.
But the other thing is the history behind it, trying to figure out how it became this shape. It’s how it went from this shattered piece of glass to this rounded gem-like type of stone that really fascinates them.”
Perkins’ fascination with sea glass started in 1981 when she spied an unusual object on the shore during her walk.
“I thought, ‘what in the world is this?’ It was bright red. I thought I’d died and gone to heaven. I couldn’t believe it,” she remembers.
Perkins stockpiled her growing collection of sea glass in a huge jug — the colourful cache stacked like glassy sediment.
One day she dumped out the whole lot to put together a public display for the Wood Islands Lighthouse. Also included in the exhibit are examples of the many origins of sea glass: clear, brown and green beer bottles; liquor and pop bottles; brilliant blue Vicks and Noxzema jars; Milk of Magnesia bottles; perfume and milk bottles. The list goes on. White or clear, as well as green and brown are the most commonly found sea glass colours, while yellow, gray, red, orange and black are extremely rare.
“But even if it’s a common colour, if it has a beautiful shape to it then it’s very desired for jewelry making. The most common shape for glass found is triangle,” Perkins says.
Some sea glass such as the brilliant cobalt blues from the old Noxzema or Vicks jars stand out in stark contrast to their sandy or rocky surroundings, but others are cloaked in a kind of camouflage. In fact, sometimes what looks like a simple black stone can transform into dark amber when held high so that the light can shine through it. Iron mixed with sulfur and carbon is the reason behind the brown colouring.
“Iron was used in the glass, that’s why they’re so sturdy and strong and have lasted so long,” Perkins says.

“They might be from the rum running days and when the rumrunners were going to get caught they just jettisoned everything. And so those bottles washed ashore.”
Some pieces of sea glass come with a sun-kissed look. For instance, a rare pink or amethyst piece is actually the result of manganese added to clear glass, and over the duration of decades of exposure to ultraviolet rays it has morphed into a lovely soft shade.
Other exciting Perkins finds included in the exhibit are polished pieces of pottery with their historic patterns still visible.
“(People) threw their rubbish in the outhouses — this was in a big pit. And then a hundred years ago, the outhouses went over the bank (due to erosion) with all the dishes (and other rubbish),” she says.
“And, of course, (things came) from ships, too. I suspect that some of those (red pieces in the exhibit) could be from the port lights from ships.”
According to LaMotte’s book, with the exception of orange, which is the rarest of the rare, red is the most coveted. He rates the chances of finding true red or ruby-red pieces to be only one for every 5,000 pieces collected. The onset of plastic and aluminum as well as the environmentally unacceptable practice of tossing one’s glass trash into the sea means the sea glass era will eventually end one day.
LaMotte admits that sea glass is a finite resource, especially the colours of old.
“Around the turn of the (last) century there were a lot more colours. There was a lot of competitive glass makers making a lot of different colours, like soft blue, soft green . . . , things like that,” he says.
“Then when automation really going rolling in the 1920s and ’30s, then things started to compress. . . to white, green and brown. So the colour selection really dwindled.”
Perkins says that collecting sea glass is like capturing pieces of history.
“It’s Prince Edward Island history in a glass tumbled form,” she says. “And on a nice quiet day you could see a whale going by or seals sitting on the rocks where we go or hear little critters in the cliffs just skittering around squawking here and there. It’s very relaxing. It’s just like you are so attuned with nature when you do it.”