![]() It is serendipitously inscribed to the couple Mr. ![]() It is a signed, first edition by author Amos Wood, “Beachcombing for Japanese Glass Floats” dated 1967! Many agree that this relic is the original, professional work on glass float info. I’m not exactly sure what the latter phrase means other than that the item is “similar to something old”.īack to real history! A few years after I’d become immersed in the sea glass world and was often speaking at beachcombers’ conferences, a friend gifted a well-used book to me. The words “tiki décor”, “nautical replica”, and my favorite “vintage style” are usually a clear sign that the piece is an imitation. There is some terminology to watch for that will help especially as one looks for float information or to purchase. Even today, some glass artists set their modern pieces afloat for beachcombing contests and tourism purposes. In contrast there are presently contemporary glass “balls” that are created as a curio, decorative piece to imitate the beauty and nostalgia of genuine, vintage glass floats. Some may still have tell-tale characteristics like seams, color, glass thickness and the personal nuances of the glass maker that help to define origin, the factory name or locale or even a specific maker.įor the sake of clarity, I define a glass fishing float as the historical, handblown or machine-made floats used for nautical buoyancy and fishing gear. And many floats can show weathered away markings or a surface that doesn’t display any such maker markings at all. Most floats that have been found along the world’s shores show clear markings that can be traced back to Japan, Korea, Russia, Taiwan, China, North America and Norway. Where were glass floats made and who used them? There are other shapes of glass floats too torpedo shape, rolling pin shape, bottle shaped, and double sphere style. True vintage glass fishing floats were made in glass factories or blown by hand, usually into a spherical shape, then sealed with a blob “button” of molten glass. The most common manner in which the floats were utilized was as a strung-together band along the tops of the fishing nets, keeping the net edge buoyant along the water’s surface. The hollow spheres were used on ocean waters to support larger scale commercial fishing nets, (often with many individual fishing nets strung together, sometimes for several miles), and to keep the nets from sinking. Usually a glass fishing float is round in form but they were blown into various shapes and sizes, from as large as a standard beach ball size to as small as a kiwi fruit. In the most elemental sense, a glass fishing float is an air-filled, closed glass container used to create buoyancy for fishermen’s nets. Today if one is found, it is likely on a Pacific Northwest coast shore or in an antique gift shop’s nautical section. ![]() Even the glass loving collector may not be totally familiar with these ocean colored orbs. Today, even the most serious beach combers have discovered that it is extremely unlikely they will ever find a genuine glass fishing float along most of the world’s shorelines. ![]() Those words were written over 50 years ago. “Out there in the North Pacific right now, riding the waves of the great Kuroshio Current, are hundreds of thousands of desirable floats just waiting to be driven ashore somewhere…”
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