Packing up for the beach today (yay!), I saw this link on Dinosaurs and Robots to Kevin Kelly’s blog, to a piece about sea glass (which we used to call “beach glass”). Kevin writes:

A name yields knowledge. When I got home looked up sea glass. Aha!  There are books. There are collectors. There’s a national association of collectors. And standards for colors. There’s a annual convention of sea glass collectors and trade show (next one is in Delaware in October).  There are enthusiasts, professionals, feuds. Anything of perceived value will have fakes and counterfeits, and sea glass has those too.

I had my own encounter with sea glass last weekend. A group of Dorkbot DC-ers were fortunate enough to be invited to sculptor Jim Sanborn and his wife artist Jae Ko’s private island in the Chesapeake Bay (where we saw things too amazing to imagine that we’re not at liberty to talk about yet). They have their own beach and it is littered with beautiful pieces of sea glass. I picked up and examined a bunch, not sure why I didn’t bring any home. Here’s some on the porch of their beach house, photographed by Dorkboter Katie Bechtold:

Chips of Broken Glass