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Rare Sea Glass Colors

Sea glass is broken glass that has been tossed into a body of water and smoothed by the tides, waves and sand of the world’s oceans and lakes and deposited on the beach. The glass looks frosted and there are no sharp edges from being worn down over the years. Used bottles and other glass objects were often thrown overboard into the sea and they lay in the ocean for decades before washing up on shore. It takes about 20 to 30 years for a piece of glass to wear down enough to be considered sea glass.

Common Colors
- The most common is clear or white that used to be clear bottles. Light green sea glass comes from soda bottles and kelly green and brown come from beer bottles thrown into the water. Blue is a little less common but still likely to be found and comes from liquor, medicine and perfume bottles. Sea glass is most often used to make jewelry today.
Purples
- There is a slight possibility of finding lavender, purple or pinkish purple sea glass almost anywhere in the world, but it is hard to find. Most of this color of glass was produced during World War I. Prior to the war, clear glass was made differently and because of the war some ingredients were difficult to procure. A substitute was made in some of the chemicals and when exposed to the sun’s ultraviolet rays for a period of time, the glass turned different hues of purple.
Yellows
- Yellow is an uncommon sea glass color. Yellow bottles were made in the past but production was limited. There was a time when clear yellow tableware was popular, but it was not made in mass quantities. Some art glass pieces were produced in yellow in the 1800s but it was not a very popular hue.
Reds
- Red sea glass is very rare but still can be found in many areas of the world. To make red glass, gold was used and it was very expensive. Different amounts of gold produced different shades of red so crimson to cranberry colors are very rare to find on the beaches today. Red sea glass comes from car tail lights, boat warning lights, lanterns, glass reflectors and from red art glass produced in the late 1800s once gold was no longer used.
Oranges
- Orange sea glass is the rarest of all. Orange glass was hardly ever made because there was never a true demand for it. Orange is a hard color to coordinate. Any orange sea glass would come from a type of art glass called Amberina and it was not totally orange. It was made in America and Europe in the late 1800’s and was shades of orange with yellow. Bowls, vases and other decorative objects were made from it, but in very limited quantities.

Sea Glass Collecting