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Katie Carrin
Unique Artisan Crafted Rare Sea Glass Jewelry
About the Sea Glass Artist - Katie Carrin
The allure of Nature has called to me all my life. As a little
girl I spent much of my time exploring and collecting the gifts the
natural world yielded up to my inquiring senses. The beauty that I
find in Nature inspires me to design elegant and harmonious jewelry that
incorporates combinations of freshwater pearls, gemstones and the most
pristine pieces of authentic sea glass.
My passion for collecting has afforded me the opportunity to amass an
authentic and voluminous array of sea glass gems. In recent years
sea glass has come to the forefront as a rare treasure. Glass has
not been disposed of along the coasts for many years. It is a
diminishing resource since Mother Nature requires decades to turn broken
shards of glass into beautiful sea glass gems. A large percentage
of sea glass in my collection as well as what I use in my jewelry
designs is English sea glass. These exceptional pieces produced by
powerful conditioning and weathering forces of the north Sea are natural
gems of the likes found nowhere else in the world. This is due
primarily to the proliferation of England's bottle factories and art
glass studios of the 1800's. Their "end-of-day" glass was tipped
into the sea resulting in "multi's", or layered glass shards with a
multitude of rich colors. "End-of-day" glass was any item made by
the glass workers in their own time at the end of the day using up the
remaining molten glass in the pots. It therefore tended to be a
mixture of all sorts of colors. Another name for the same kind of
item was a "frigger" or a "whimsy". Sometimes these were fun
items, like walking sticks, rolling pins or animals made of glass.
Sometimes they were items for the glass workers' own home, and sometimes
they were for sale. It is these rare vintage antique sea glass gems that are
featured in my current unique jewellery collection.
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