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| today's intact bottleneck |
Collecting Beach Glass is one of my favorite hobbies, and late autumn is one of the best times to find it. The rare calm days that punctuate November's status quo of choppy riotous waters are oft to reveal marvelous treasures. In part this is because the weather conditions dredge more of it up, but the real reason is because no sane person wants to get cold and wet and slapped by wind at the beach in late fall! Of course, that means there's simply more for the taking for those of us occupying the lunatic fringe.
of course, not every day is a lucky one. there are a number of productive beaches near where i live; rocky, smelly, full of trash and dead fish. and on occasion i leave with pockets full of pinks and yellows and all manner of rare colors. Today, that did not happen.
i found some nice things, no doubt, but not quite what i was hoping to find. the first treasure of note was the intact top of a bottle, presumably from hot sauce judging by the small opening. intact bottlenecks are a relative rarity, so even in a common color such as clear glass, they are a treat to come across. Not long after, i discovered an opaque, two-tone blue glass bead, which i for sure thought was plastic but picked up anyway. the bead was heavy for its size, and had a gritty feel, more akin to polished glass with a definite glassy "plink" when dropped on a hard surface. I'm in love with
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| two-tone opaque glass bead |
the vintage character of the bead and it looks slightly art deco. im not sure if i want to turn it into a jewelry piece, or keep it in my jar of rare pieces as one of the trophies of my collection. either way im very glad i found it!
The rest of todays haul was mostly common colors, though i did find two pieces of clear pattern glass, 3 pieces of UV glass, 1 piece of gray glass, and an unusual aqua-gray piece, much darker than is typical for aqua glass. it was also a good day for cobalt blue and lime green, and found several pieces in both of those colors, though they are not as rare as the reds and yellows which I covet.
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| Pattern glass, and gray and aqua-gray |
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at any rate, i was at least the first person to the beach this morning. so i got first pick of what washed ashore last night. as i was finishing up i got the chance to talk to some fellow collectors, informed them that there wasn't much today and we got to boast about our past finds. one older woman i talked to informed me of a beautiful piece of dark purple she found at the location during the Super Moon earlier this month. we wished each other luck and went our own separate ways.
once i got home and emptied my pockets, the first thing i do is check my collection under a black light, and if you dont check your finds either you are really missing out on some rare treats. years ago, uranium was used in the manufacture of glassware and ceramics. before it was weaponized, and before people even knew what radioactivity was, uranium was valued as a pigment, yielding a vibrant color in shades of yellow and green. in years past, glass of this sort would have been proudly displayed in a window, since the color of the glass seems to intensify in sunlight. This effect is the
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| Today's Limes and Cobalts |
result of the pigment reacting to the light, and is not actually caused by radiation (many substances fluoresce under black light, and very few of them give off radiation). Speaking of radiation, this stuff is pretty safe to handle. The amount of uranium actually used to create a piece of this glass is so
minimal that even an intact piece of green depression glass wont even
register on a Geiger counter and the exposure you would receive from
these little shards is nothing to worry about when you consider the
background radiation we are exposed to daily, which enters earth from
space, and comes up from the ancient rocks beneath our feet.
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| Today's UV glass under black light |
UV glass is highly collectible, both in its intact and surf-ravaged forms, and looks simply amazing displayed under a blacklight, or stored in a jar on a windowsill to enjoy its much more subtle display. If you would like to find such glass, the most common color is a pale minty green, though over the years ive found UV reactive pieces in red, pale yellow, pale blue and opaque white milk glass. if you have jars of beach glass from years past lying around, i encourage you to check your collection and see if you have any UV you didnt know about!
Thank you for reading :)
