Sea
glass
I don’t remember when or how I discovered about sea
glass but now, it is my latest obsession. I had no idea about sea glass when I
was in India. A few years ago, when I was searching for something else on the internet, I discovered sea
glass … I think. Ever since I
discovered sea glass I have fallen in love with it and have spent several hours
trawling on the internet and even borrowing books from the library to read
about it.
While drooling over photos of sea-glass on the
internet, I was lead into the world of other fascinating things such as sea
pottery, sea brick and beach stones. I enjoyed seeing the photos of sea brick
and sea pottery, though there is less about them on the internet, compared to
sea-glass. I also started reading about
sea-glass related things such as the sea glass museum at Fort Bragg in
California and the sea glass events held in places like USA & Canada, and
UK. I saw the lovely art work and
jewellery people have made out of sea glass in the western world. I also recall
seeing, in a Baltimore jewelry shop by the harbour, lovely glass earrings
…the glass was supposed to be from Rome
and produced in B.C! I hope it’s true! I love the idea of earrings
made of glass from over 2000 years ago!
During my childhood, I had loved sea shells like any
other child and still love them but I am no longer obsessed with them now. I
now feel sorry for the sea animals in shells which are picked and killed for
their shells and I don’t want any part of that. I pray and hope that someday,
People will accept that even molluscs feel pain and stop torturing/killing
them. (“Yo
turtle-eater. Put yourself in the place of the turtle and try to imagine how it
feels to have your skin/shell ripped out of you, even as you are living and
breathing”.)
About a month ago, we went to Scarborough Bluffs as
part of ‘show-Toronto-to-visitors-from USA’. And while walking along Lake
Ontario in Scarborough’s Bluffer’s Park, I found my first beach glass (less
tumbled than sea glass but quite pretty and pretty good!) I was thrilled! For
me, it was like finding a treasure!
I soon found
and collected quite a bit of beach glass…about 50 pieces maybe. Most of the
glass was milky white or a very pale green though I did find a few dark or
bright shades such as cornflower blue, stout brown and a bright red. Most of
the glass pieces had not been in water for a sufficient time …many were yet to
lose their jagged edges and become rounded … but it was good enough for me!
My ceaseless talking about sea-glass seemed to have
infected my husband too and he too began searching the beach. Being picky, he collected fewer pieces but
they were really smooth and worthy of being made into jewelry. We returned to
Bluffer’s park again after a week (you do not have to pay
for parking from start of winter till end of April)
specifically to pick the beach glass.
And this time I picked up other stuff like sea pottery, sea brick and round speckled
stones which may actually be pieces of concrete with embedded stones …the
concrete pieces have become round after being smoothened by the waves of the
lake.
I loved the
bricks on the beach this time! These are bricks with the edges rounded off by
the waves and the holes in them look cute and they could be made to hold tiny
plants or flowers! Another reason I am simply amazed by these bricks is that I
compare these bricks of Toronto with the lousy
quality bricks I have seen in India (Bangalore and
Karnataka especially in the 70s when my dad was getting our house built).
The red mud bricks in India were so weak that they would break if they fell
from a height of three or four feet! And some bricks in India were so poorly burnt that they
would crumble if it simply rained on them! While these bricks from Toronto
which have been in Lake Ontario, for years have only their edges rounded off!
It makes me angry thinking of the poor quality of so many things in India.
The red bricks in Toronto are almost like rocks! As
people in Toronto (and many parts of US & Canada) have seen, there are
millions of exposed brick houses and
brick buildings which are over 100 years old…these brick houses are not covered
with stucco or concrete and the bricks are exposed to the severe winters, to
rain, snow, summer’s heat and yet, they remain strong! I have seen brick streets
in Etobicoke and the distillery district, with vehicles running over them, yet
they remain strong.
The rounded concrete pieces too were pretty
intriguing for me. I have put the photos of all I found here and when you see
the photos, you will know what I am talking about.
I did not see any sort of shells by the lake here…I
don’t know if it’s too cold for the molluscs here in Lake Ontario near
Scarborough…or if there’s some other reason as to why I did not find any shells
here. We found plenty of pebbles and beach stones…they were beautiful, but I
did not pick them.
My husband made these ear-rings and pendants which I
wore with glee, the very next day. And I am planning to arrange the pieces of
beach glass in different patterns, photograph them and save the photos.
Unfortunately, I am not as creatively gifted as my husband and the only thing I
can do is collect these glasses and weave fantasies about them!
Another topic of interest to me is driftwood. But I
am yet to find interesting pieces and make something of them.
