The trouble with the sea glass on our nearest beach is that it's mostly been discarded in the last few weeks. The shards are usually sharp, shiny new and they're usually green. These pieces are mainly from broken lager bottles, probably the best broken lager bottles in the world. If we picked these up and made them into jewellery, they would look bright, new and shiny and not old, worn and tumbled like the pieces we use. It's a matter of preference, after all they're all pieces of sea glass from Croyde.
You rarely find wonderfully worn sea glass on Croyde beach, which makes the pieces we do find even more precious ...but just close by are some stunning sea glass beaches, where old, rounded smooth, well-tumbled sea glass and pottery can be found, washed up on to the pebbles. It's these that we use. We do not cut or shape the pieces, but wrap the sterling silver bezel around the glass, or pottery, just as we find it, to accentuate their organic beauty.
Summer means more brown beer, green lager and clear cider bottles discarded on the beach, to end, being smashed up, sticking in someone's flip flop, or a dog's paw. We pick these glassy daggers up and bring them home to place in the recycling, along with any other plastic waste, or metal we find on the beach...or just maybe, those we don't find, will be picked up on a high tide, washed along the sea bed, broken, tumbled and buried under the sand. The slivers gently being worn down and the sharp, rough edges smoothed down, to be delivered many years later, maybe on a different beach, ready to be made into stunning jewellery. Let's hope they don't end up sticking in someone's foot.