‘Sea Glass’ a book for beachcombers Author traces history of worn fragments

SEA GLASS CHRONICLES: WHISPERS FROM THE PAST by C. S. Lambert, photographs by Pat Hanbery, Down East Books, Camden, 2001, 96 pages, hardcover, $30.

When you comb the beach for sea glass, do you ever wonder where it came from?

Sometimes – near a bottle dump or a bar, for example – it’s easy to trace the source of a chunk of brown glass or a slender bottleneck. Other times, it’s difficult. How did broken Fiesta ware or a perfume stopper end up washed ashore in the middle of nowhere?

Many of these castaways have made their way here from distant shores, after tossing about for centuries on the sea. Softened edges and pocked surfaces become souvenirs from the journey, yet their origins often remain clear. Time turns these sharp bits of trash into treasure – tangible fragments of history.

After more than 15 years of hunting on beaches in Maine and around the world, Camden author C.S. Lambert decided to trace the history of some of her treasures – a handful of ruby red fragments, shards of English marmalade jars, bottle-mouth “rings,” and a collection of weathered porcelain doll parts.

In “Sea Glass Chronicles,” Lambert charts the history of what she’s plucked from beaches in Maine and around the world. Florida-based photographer Pat Hanbery vividly illustrates this rich, detailed account. Whether she depicts a cache of ruby glass or a tiny ceramic hand reaching out from a tangle of seaweed, Hanbery captures the magic that occurs when nature and time work their wonders on everyday things.

“Like a time capsule, sea glass can reveal much about the people, places, and events that were linked to the original object,” Lambert writes in the book’s prologue. “Some shards speak more clearly than others, which steadfastly refuse to surrender their histories. And some pieces raise more questions than they answer.”

Lambert tried to track down the answers, and what she found was impressive. “Sea Glass Chronicles” is the result of that research. It’s part history, part archaeology, and entirely interesting. Rather than wax poetic on the beauty and mystery of sea glass, she finds solid facts that give the fragments context. She tells where and when the long-broken original pieces were made, and explains the origins of unusual colors and forms.

Most sea-glass aficionados know that red is one of the hardest colors to find, and Lambert tells them why. Ruby red glass gets its color from gold, which accounts for its relative rarity. Lavender-tinted glass was originally clear – exposure to sunlight turns the manganese in the glass purple.

If you pick up a piece of weathered ceramic with the log cabin on it, it could be part of a Royal China Co. plate that was given away in grocery stores in the 1940s. A ceramic hand sticking out of the sand could date back to the 1700s. And those faceted pieces of pressed glass probably came from a mass-produced plate from the 1820s.

Hanbery illustrates these detailed descriptions with beautifully imaginative photos. She sets the glass against backdrops of sand, snow, rocks and sheets of glass that bring out the luminosity of the pieces. Even someone who doesn’t collect sea glass can appreciate the rich, soothing photographs.

For those of you who have jars and lamps and bowls full of sea glass (you know who you are), this book is a must-have. Every “mermaid’s tear” has a history – “Sea Glass Chronicles” will help you find it.