Author, artisans share fascination in sea glass

Carole Lambert returned to the United States from Paris and settled in Rockport more than a decade ago.

A journalism professor at the American University and an editor for the International Herald Tribune, she wondered about what path she would take as she sought to change careers. She thought about leaving writing behind for a new endeavor.

Instead she would combine her writing with a new fancy — sea glass.

"I was walking the beach every day wondering what am I going to do, and I started stumbling across a fair amount of glass. It was abundant, and in all colors. I had never seen anything like that," Lambert said.

She spent 1991 to 1994 in Rockport,, a time when she would meet her future husband. In fact, the English pottery shard she found on the beach the day she met her husband would become part of her wedding veil.

To Lambert's chagrin, she had to leave the town she had grown to love, with its abundant beaches and sea glass treasures. After they married, they moved to Rockport, Maine, when her husband changed jobs.

"The real passion I acquired for sea glass happened when I was there," she said.

In mourning for her change of residence, Lambert began an endeavor to memorialize what she learned about the tradition of collecting sea glass.

That 2001 book, "Sea Glass Chronicles: Whispers from the Past," remains a bestseller for Down East Books, a Maine publisher, and is now in its eighth printing.

"I don't know if I would have written that book if I still lived there," Lambert said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Lambert will return to Gloucester tomorrow to talk about her just published second book, "A Passion for Sea Glass."

"These books are building on Carole's reputation as an internationally known expert on the history of sea glass," said Rosemary Herbert, the Down East publicity director. "In this new book, Carole is looking at what people who are passionate about sea glass do with the treasures they have collected. The variety and creativity of the work produced is nothing short of astonishing."

Several Cape Ann residents are featured in the book: Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco, Elynn Kroger, Melinda Conrad, Barbara Burnham, Anna Comolli, Susan Frey, Michael and Thomas Vaiarella and Denise Donnelly.

Kroger, a Rocky Neck artist, drew Lambert's attention because of the way she used sea glass in an outdoor display case for her artwork.

"There were white stones below the display case and I found the stones reflected too harshly onto the glass," Kroger said. "Rather than replace the white rocks, I began to put sea glass there."

"It's a way to catch people's eye and it's a conversation piece," she added. Kroger would soon discover that "once you know someone who collects sea glass, you start to know them all."

A humble beginning

Lambert remembered when she gathered up her first pieces of sea glass as a young girl. The daughter of a career military father, she traveled a lot. But the family had a summer house in Wellfleet.

"This was in the days before sunglasses for children, so whenever I would walk on the beach I couldn't see anything. I was always looking down, and being so close to the ground at the age of 5, that's how I stumbled across it," she said. "Like most people who vacation on the coast or live on the coast, you end up putting your sea glass in a Mason jar with some initial thoughts about what to do with it. But often it eventually ends up in an attic."

She never forgot her childhood delight at unearthing tiny shards of sea glass washed onto the shore from the bottom of the sea.

When she lived in Europe, she visited Normandy, France, and Galway, Ireland, where she would wander the coastline looking for tiny treasures.

"It's pretty much what we find over here," she said. "My interest in sea glass has evolved over the years but it really attracted me when I moved to Rockport, Mass."

It was here she met Denise Donnelly, who broadened her knowledge of sea glass and introduced her to ceramic shards.

"That really opened my eyes. They are miniature masterpieces, and I tend to favor those pieces now. I consider them like gemstones," said Lambert.

In her first book, Lambert takes readers through the adventure of collecting and identifying glass and pottery pieces.

"So many people told me how interesting they found that information to be but they did not know what people did with all the sea glass they collected. That led me to develop the second book," she said.

The new book takes the reader into the homes of sea glass collectors and workshops of artisans who find new purposes for the sea-worn pieces.

"I didn't know some of the extraordinary things people did with it," Lambert said. She was fascinated with an 85-year old gentleman who for half a century has been working on a series of stained glass windows he designed in which every piece was sea glass that washed up on a little cranberry island in Maine.

The book brings to life a mosaic of people from a diver who searches the ocean floor for sea glass to an artisan who makes gnome homes adorned with fragments of sea glass.

Gail McCarthy may be contacted at gmccarthy@gloucestertimes.com.

If you go

What: Interpreting Sea Glass. The Gloucester Lyceum will present Carole Lambert, author of "A Passion for Sea Glass."

When: Tomorrow at 7 p.m.

Where: The main floor of Sawyer Free Library on Dale Street in Gloucester. Various collectors profiled in the book will be available to share their expertise and answer questions about their experiences with sea glass. The discussion will include how the general perception of sea glass has changed over the past eight years and the creation of the North American Sea Glass Association.

How much: Free to the public.

Local News

Search Results

Related Photos

Discussion

Site Map

Contact Us