Sample of Wexford Sea Glass
Sea glass also known as Beach Glass is glass that has been smoothed and shaped by the abrasive actions of wave and sand until it has become frosted and worn. Like sea shells and stones it has become quite popular to collect sea glass as a hobby.
Some of the reasons people collect sea glass.
Sea glass is beautiful :- Many unusual shapes and colours can be found among sea glass depending on what its original purpose was and how the elements have shaped the shards of glass over time once they were discarded as trash. Much of collected sea glass is used in arts and crafts to make many items such as jewelery and collages.
Sea glass is historical:- The shards of sea glass may be formed over hundreds of years or even millennia as old as glass making it self, it could have come from cargo bottles of ship wrecks or mizens and dumps of settlers in an area stretching back many generations. It maybe as common as a fragment of a jam jar or as rare as a viking glass bead from a necklace lost overboard on a stormy sea crossing. Many collectors of sea glass seek the origins or thier glass by researching the history of glass making techniques, old dates, markings and symbols that sometimes can remain on the glass and the colours and shapes that may indicate what sort of vessel the shard may have come from.
Collecting sea glass is free:- There is no real costs associated with collecting sea glass except for transport to a suitable location such as the seaside and taking the time to search for sea glass finds. If you already take walks along a beach or beach comb it is just another thing to keep an eye out for.
Collecting sea glass is environmental:- Sea glass collecting is reusing and recycling the pieces of sea glass for ornamental and craft purposes and reducing the amount of glass on beaches. Any piece collected is one less piece that cold potentially harm a bare footed swimmer.
Wexford and its coastline has a number of factors that make it favourable for collecting sea glass.
Through out history there have been people settling, trading and travelling among Wexford’s coastal waters and a large number of vessels have been lost in the treacherous waters around the Saltee islands an area referred to as the “Graveyard of a Thousand Ships”.This means there is abundant sources for raw glass in many different colours. These can vary from onshore settlements to items washed ashore from sea deposits.
To form correctly sea glass needs strong wave action and the coastal erosion evident today is testament that the wave action and shifting sands in Wexford can easily provided the buffing and polishing sea glass requires.
Wexford’s coastline has many points to easily access almost the entire coastline due to a good network of access roads for sporting activities, swimming and coastal walks.
However it is best to avoid Wexford’s main swimming beaches when collecting sea glass as there is a very good level of litter control, water safety and quality in place with many of Wexford’s beaches awarded prestigious Blue flags so the beaches are near pristine, good for swimmers bad for sea glass collecting. There are many rocky coastal areas and harbours along the coast which will more likely yield much better results.
While sea glass collecting can be fun and interesting as a hobby caution should be taken when handling sea glass shards especially for non adults. It is still essentially as the name suggests shards of glass and while most of a piece may be frosted and smooth the odd edge may still be very sharp if it is not as worn by tidal action as the rest of the piece of glass due to being half buried or recently chipped. Also contact with hard objects and even sea glass shards with each other can chip edges overtime so being careful whenever you handle the pieces even after you have them home is advised.