How many shades of green are there? Well in Sea Glass, there is no limit. Here is my collection of green seaglass.
In the bottom right, you have the very light – almost blue clear glass. This is mostly flat glass as used in windows. This is more likely the pure silica glass without any clarifying agents. It has a bluish tint and to some eyes like mine appears green.
In the top right is mostly emerald green- the third most common seaglass colour. While there is some flat glass, I have mostly rounded “bottle glass”, including a bottle bottom where I can see the imprint “one quart”.
Continuing counterclockwise, we find the medium-dark (drab or olive green). Many of these come from old bottles, usually wine, that needed to be protected from sunlight. A few have bubbles in them which is typical of early 1900′s hand blown glass.
On the far left I have several “black” pieces. These are a very dark green and sometimes you need to hold them to very bright light to see they are indeed green. These darker greens usually come from medicine bottles. These often had iron added to them, not only for the darkness (uv light protection) but also to harden the glass. Therefore your late 1800′s expensive medicine bottles were less likely to break if dropped.
On the bottom left I have a few brownish pieces. Like the transition from blue to turquoise to green, these pieces tend to appear green next to brown glass but brown next to green glass.
Then I have a dozen or more “one of a kind” greens that range from almost blue to almost grey. It would be interesting to find the time to explore the origin of all these various colours. I know some are recent pieces and are the product of modern alchemy but it is fun to discover how we used to “tint” glass a hundred or more years ago.
More on sea glass colours to follow. Thanks for stopping by . . .
Granny ~oo~