When you find a piece of sea glass on the beach, do you ever wonder where it came from?   I always imagine that the glass was part of a pirate’s shipwreck or a bottle of wine shared by lovers on the beach.  

This post is all about turquoise sea glass, sometimes also called teal.  This shade of sea glass is one of the rarest.  Only one in 4,000-6,000 pieces of sea glass that beachcombers find are turquoise.

Turquoise glass was produced in small batches before the 1950s, and has been in production for over 3,000 years.  In order to make this glass, producers had to accurately blend the right proportions of cobalt, iron, and chromium to get its color.  It was so hard to produce a consistent color from batch to batch that it wasn’t widely produced.

Originally, teal glass was mostly glass seltzer and mineral water bottles, wine bottles, ink and baking soda bottles, glass insulators and early hot sauce bottles. The older the glass is, the more bubbly it appears.  If you hold your sea glass up to the light, you can easily see if it has bubbles inside. 

Since the blend of ingredients was so delicate, the shades of teal sea glass range a lot.  When you compare the different pieces of turquoise sea glass, it’s easy to see the slight differences in shade.  This sea glass color is rare, but easy to spot on the beach when combing.  And when you do find it, it’s truly like finding a piece of treasure.

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