Part of the appeal of collecting sea glass is trying to figure out where each piece originated. It’s like trying to solve a mystery. It’s quite a thrill for me when I figure out where a piece has come from. Like the other day, when I was leafing through Richard LaMotte’s Pure Sea Glass and I found a photo of amberina glass.

“That’s it! That’s it!” I yelled, as if i had just solved the crime of the century. My husband just looked at me and grunted his approval.

What was I so excited about? A few months ago I found a teeny tiny orange and red piece of sea glass on the shores of Lake Erie. I had no idea what it came from – but it sure was pretty. Then as I was looking up various colours of sea glass in LaMotte’s book, I saw a photo of amberina. I had solved the riddle!

Here’s what the Encyclopedia Britannica has to say about amberina:

Blended colour glass in which the lower part, a yellowish amber, merges into a ruby-red colour higher in the vessel. It was patented in 1883 for the New England Glass Company at East Cambridge, Mass., and was produced extensively there and by the successor company, the Libbey Glass Company at Toledo, Ohio, into the 1890s. The base metal was an amber glass containing some gold, and the tinges were developed by applied reheating. The glass was sometimes blown in molds. A wide range of table and ornamental wares, with diamond or ogival designs, or swirled ribbing, were produced by the New England Glass Company, and amberina glass was also produced at New Bedford, Mass., under the name rose amber.

Looks like I found myself a wee gem!