Mary Beth Beuke - The Ultimate Guide to Sea Glass: Finding, Collecting, Identifying, and Using the Oceans Most Beautiful Stones

Copyright 2014 by Mary Beth Beuke

Foreword copyright 2014 by Lisl Armstrong

All photos copyright 2014 by Mary Beth Beuke unless otherwise noted

, ShutterStock/Graeme Dawes

, ShutterStock/runzelkorn

, ShutterStock/Christopher Elwell

, ThinkStock/iStock/Ivan Mikhaylov

, ThinkStock/iStock/Image Source Pink

, ThinkStock/iStock/kertlis

, ThinkStock/iStock/Anna39

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Jane Sheppard

Cover photo credit Mary Beth Beuke

ISBN: 978-1-62873-780-6

E-book ISBN: 978-1-62914-150-3

Printed in China

dedication

To my creative, patient, beautiful, and hilarious children; Elise, Blaise, and Emma, I will always be your biggest fan.

To Lindsay Furber for her business encouragement and faithful friendship.

To Teresa Crecelius and Karen Wheeler for being true mermaids and helping West Coast Sea Glass with the more difficult, day-to-day work in the studio.

To Nancy and Richard LaMotte for being more than sea glass people; for being dear friends on the other coast.

To Renne Brock-Richmond for keeping color and the arts alive in my hometown and in life.

To Lisl Armstrong for camaraderie, friendship, and teaching me to keep doing my thing.

To Todd Beuke for helping to make some of the more ambitious beach hikes happen.

To Gene, Rex, Lisa, and Julie for being my dates on those far-away trips.

To the staff at Olympic Medical Cancer Center without whose help I would not have been able to tackle writing this book.

To some of my other sea glass friends; Monica, Linda M., Ben, Jamie, Jen, Terri, Sharon, Takis, and Christeena for hard work, countless gestures of support, and friendship.

To all the West Coast Sea Glass work party ladies.

foreword

Decades ago, by way of serendipity sprinkled with wanderlust, I found my first piece of sea glass on a beach in Puerto Rico. It was a cobalt blue bottle rim. The surf literally delivered it to me. It washed up within two feet from where I was standing. When I picked it up, I felt a sense of enchantment and experienced something within my being that I can only describe as a sacred sound. My life changed and I was suddenly a full-time beachcomber. I have been wandering beaches all over the world ever since. For myself, beachcombing is a lifestyle, a passion, and a constant learning.

I first met Mary Beth Beuke in person at the 2008 North American Sea Glass Festival in Lewes, Delaware. We had been corresponding online for quite some time prior to the festival. Early on during our communications, it became apparent to me that her knowledge about sea glass was as vast as the Pacific Ocean.

We have enjoyed many phone conversations, me strolling along a sugar-white sand beach in Florida staring at the turquoise Gulf of Mexico while she overlooks the stormy Salish Sea from her deck. As a life-long learner, I was very excited to have connected with her and soon started to consider her a true resource. When someone asks me a question about sea glass that I cannot answer, or if I have a question myself, Mary Beth is often the first person I ask.

There is an interconnectedness amongst those that explore the planets diverse shorelines. Shortly after journeying into the pages of this book, I think any beach lover will recognize a kindred spirit in the author.

Within Mary Beth there exists a perfect storm of sea glass information. She has the kind of knowledge that is rare and experiential. This kind of knowledge happens when your inner being dances with the world around you. She has been exploring beaches along the Pacific coast since childhood and lives her life according to the rhythm of the oceans tides. Mary Beth is a glass expert in her own right. Her intimate knowledge of glass types, colors, textures etc. puts her on the fast track when it comes to identifying the origin of a piece of sea glass.

Her exquisite sea glass collection is a testament of her many lengthy and meandering journeys along the worlds coastlines. Within these pages, she shares beautiful photographs of some of her crown sea glass jewels. A collection such as this only comes together after many years of beachcombing far and wide.

While reviewing the materials, I found myself constantly returning to favorite sections and photographs of rare beauties. A range of topics is presented here and they all come together beautifully. You will come back to this book time and time again. This book is best viewed from a cozy perch so that you can explore, dream, and journey.

Lisl Armstrong
artist and beachcomber
Out of the Blue Sea Glass Jewelry

P ART O NE

WHAT IS SEA GLASS?

introduction

It was about 5:00 a.m. on an early spring morning. The orange sunlight beamed skyward from behind the Northern Cascades. I had to greet the sunrise for myself, so I went out to the beach, which was fortunately just a few steps away from my front door.

No one in my shoreline neighborhood had trekked out ahead of me, so footprints, paw prints, and clamming boot indents were absent along the sandy parts of the beach.

I realized I had low tide all to myself.

Any good or sufficiently obsessed sea glass hunter makes sure to move their mornings and days in symmetry with the movement of the tides. The tides change and flow along all shores of the worlds oceans. Each day, there are two different high tides and two different low tides. And every days tides land at a different time during the day than the day before.

I walked quietly and casually searched for sea glass that morning.

Looking for beach treasures has been a lifelong pastime of mine. I grew up on the Oregon Coast and spent many weekends as a child running through the sand and crab grass, building sand castles, and wading in the surf.

I have kayaked and beachcombed miles of shoreline to find, by hand, these distinct pieces, each with a journey, a captivating history, or perhaps a romantic legend to reveal.

The Northern Cascade mountain range on an early spring morning as viewed from the Salish Sea at low tide.