If you are fond of sea glass jewelry, it’s a good choice indeed. However, do you know that there is something called ‘fake’, ‘faux’, ‘frosted’, ‘machine tumbled’ or plainly ‘artificial’ sea glass? Yes, and if you want to get your hands on jewelry made of authentic sea glass, you should learn to differentiate between genuine and fake. Here are a few useful tips that will help you in the differentiation.
What is Sea Glass?
If you have no idea what sea glass is, it’s real glass derived from jars, bottles and other glass items that is tumbled by ocean waves and sand for a number of years. Decades may be passed in the process of creation of sea glass from these glass items. Pieces of sea glass are collected from beaches and then made into beautiful jewelry and other items.
Characteristics of Authentic Sea Glass
The distinct characteristics of authentic sea glass cannot be duplicated in manmade sea glass. Here are some:
Pores: If you see a piece of genuine sea glass under a microscope, you will see ‘c’ shaped pores or abrasions which make it distinguished from artificial sea glass. They are formed by years of tumbling of ocean surf and different types and sizes of gravel, sand and hydration that takes place from exposure to water for decades. Some sea glass may have them in a less amount if it wasn’t in a surf environment or was lying in the old dump areas on the shore. Manmade sea glass has no uneven texture because the media with which it is tumbled is placed in a machine and is of uniform size. Other method used is etching with chemicals that leave no pores.
Frost: Frost or crystalline formations are seen on real sea glass when it is taken out from sea. You can conceal it and increase the color of your sea glass jewelry by rubbing oil on its surface. Frost is the resultant of years of exposure to ocean water and breakage of the glass thereby due to salinity. Because of this, hydroxide (and not salt) leaches on its surface. Frost offers the characteristic beauty to sea glass.
Thickness: The thicker the sea glass, the more number of years it is likely to be inside the sea. It also has a curved shape. Newer or fake glass is thinner than older and genuine glass and has no curvature that comes from a real jar or bottle.
At HandmadeSeaGlassJewelry.com, you get a treasure of sea glass necklaces, bracelets, anklets, rings, earrings and much more. The jewelry is made from the rare and authentic sea glass pieces collected by the company owners and their staff working hard throughout winter in the northern Bahamas, an area famous for being full of lovely, old sea glass coming from a number of shipwrecks that took place in the early 1800s. I couldn’t resist myself from giving some of their fabulous jewelry pieces in this article. You will find a range of them on the website.
