North Beach Treasures
Seaglass Colors
Special Pieces
Other Beach Treasures
Photo Gallery
About Me
Copyright© 2006-11 by North Beach Treasures & Peter Messerschmidt, All Rights Reserved
Authentic Beach Collected Sea Glass, Pottery and Artifacts from the Pacific Northwest
My Personal Sea Glass Story...
...began when I was maybe five or six years old.
I was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, but my parents traveled extensively on account of my father's job working with bottling plants all around the world. We often ended up living in coastal towns around Europe and the rest of the world, and when my dad wasn't working we'd often spend the days at the beach, relaxing or walking around.
I think I was born with an interest in "finding things," and my dad had always enjoyed beach combing, so we'd walk along the water's edge together.
And so it happened, on a beach in the south of France, that I noticed there were "small blue stones" in the sand, and started picking them up-- the bright color was so different from everything else on the beach. The year was 1966.
The "small blue stones," of course, were sea glass.
The original "small blue stones" are long gone, lost in the course of a series of moves around the world. However, my fascination with finding glass and other treasures on the beach continues to be strong, 40+ years later.
Beach combing and sea glass collecting have always been strictly hobbies for me-- I love the experience of spending hours by the sea shore, as well as the thrill of finding something uniqie-- but I have never been gripped by a desire to "make" anything with the glass I find.
However, this hobby has helped me meet many interesting people along the way-- fellow glass collectors, other beachcombers, as well as scores of jewelers, artisans and craftspeople who create marvelous objects with sea glass.
Now, as the Internet brings the world into our living rooms, I am meeting more collectors than ever and have discovered just how many people enjoy this peaceful pastime of wandering along the sea shore.
Also thanks to the Internet, I have started sharing my finds with people all around the world, through photos of sea glass published online, my sea glass blog and through selling some of my finds to people through online venues. As I've discovered, even through sea glass can be found almost anywhere with an ocean shore, the colors and types of glass vary tremendously from one location to the next. Hence we all get more enjoyment from the hobby as a result of trading with each other.
These days I make my home in the small historic hamlet of Port Townsend, in western Washington state-- a town on the end of a peninsula, thus surrounded by water on three sides. The glass on these pages was primarily found in the Pacific Northwest, although some pieces came from other parts of the world.
