BELOW AND OPPOSITE PAGE, part of the fun in collecting sea glass is contemplating its history. These gems from McGrath’s collection, left, and Werts’ collection, right, originated as stoppers for apothecary bottles, the bases and necks of bottles, and a few glass objects whose function or shape can only be imagined now.
glass found just a few days later by her husband. A love story delivered by the tide.
McGrath’s powerful collection helped arouse
the beach comber in Werts. The women first met when their children attended school together in the 1990s, and McGrath later started a marketing busi- ness with Werts’ husband. Five or six years ago, when they were more acquaintances than friends, Werts was given a glimpse of McGrath’s collection. Her casual tendency to pick up the occasional piece of sea glass while running on the beach quickly spiraled into what she laughingly refers to as a healthy neurosis.
“It’s a total win-win. There’s not a negative thing
about it,” Werts says. By collecting something that started as someone’s trash and was slowly trans- formed into her treasure, she considers the act a beach clean up of the best kind.
McGrath concurs. “It’s the perfect combination of man and nature. It’s a man made object; then it
becomes a jewel through nature.” Through the years, Werts and McGrath have roamed the beaches together, alone, and with other friends and family members. They walk quickly through the sandy patches, and slow down to scour each rocky patch that the waves have exposed. Sharing a glass hunt along the shore with people they love heightens the experience. “It’s therapeutic and bonding and meditative,” Werts says. “People who really get the same rhythm are really fun to be with. It’s like a dance.”
The love of the hunt has found both women an-
kle deep in sand and salt water on foreign shores. McGrath recently tolerated the puzzled looks of local Slovenians as she collected glass along the Adriatic Sea, and Werts has discovered that Costa Rica can offer many fine shells but much less sea glass than the California coast. And though both women have added beach combing to travel itiner- aries, Werts now schedules long weekend drives up
it’S the perfect combinAtion of mAn AnD nAture. it’S A mAn
18 carPinteriaMaGaZINE
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