R.J. Marx: Everyday People: A fascination with sea glass

Sep. 5—GEARHART — When some people go to the beach, they see waves, sun and sky.

When Peggy Stein visits the beach, she is looking into the rocks.

She was living at the beach at Channel Islands Harbor in Ventura, California, when she first started collecting sea glass — ocean-polished glass that can come from bottles, household goods, car lights or insulators. It may have been left on the beach, left over from a glass factory or dumped into the ocean.

The glass is found throughout the world, but is predominantly found in areas with gravel piles and small rocks that can "wash" the glass to a smooth polish. "You won't find it on sand beaches, which is why we don't have it in Oregon," she said. "It needs to be tumbling in with other pebbles to create and to get caught. It's something that basically was trash. It went in as a sharp shard, and came back as a really rounded beautiful piece of glass."

The tumbling process can usually take 50 to 100 years, she said. Anything less would likely be thrown back. "Anything that you find that has still a shiny, glossy piece on or edge on it, we consider to be 'uncooked,'" she said. "It has to be cooked to keep it."

Born Peggy Hannon in Portland, she was brought up in a letterpress shop, she said, where she learned to handset type and operate a letterpress machine.

"From the time my sister and I were young, we were hanging out in the shop, and then probably middle school, he started to teach me more about doing paste up layout for ad work," she said.

After graduation, she went to work at Levitz Furniture in their advertising department, doing layouts for ads in The Oregonian. She later returned to school where she learned medical transcription, a career she pursued for the next 30 years.

She met and married Andrew Stein, the founder of Logotek Inc., which produces custom promotional products.

Throughout, she developed her hobby.

"My parents loved to go to the beach," she said. "My mom loved to beachcomb. So from the time I was a little kid, I got into it."

In the 1980s, she moved to California, where she began to explore her fascination with sea glass at Glass Beach in Fort Bragg.

A treasure trove can be found in Santa Cruz, she said, because a glass studio on a cliff stored unused glass behind the studio, which happened to be near a creek. In the 1970s, an overflowing creek swept glass into the ocean during a rainstorm.

"And now this glass is coming back in," she said. "It's all beautiful, multicolored."

Getting to it can be treacherous, she added. "The waves are just wicked there. And you don't typically find it on the beach. You have to get out in the water. People wear wetsuits and have elaborate basket setups," she said. "They actually market it as 'Santa Cruz glass.'"

Sea glass is sold in galleries, eBay and Etsy, she said. Stein sells her work at the Natural Nook in Gearhart.

Sea glass exists throughout the world, with examples found from Roman times. Most of the glass on the West Coast is "newer, relatively speaking."

Pieces can be made into jewelry. Black glass, considered the oldest and used to preserve liquids before refrigeration, is called "pirate glass" because it is from buccaneer days.

The East Coast has more colors, because the glass is older and more decorative.

On the Oregon Coast, there is little opportunity to discover sea glass, with exceptions around Lincoln City and Newport, she said.

In a world of plastic pollution, sea glass is becoming more of a rarity. "We aren't throwing trash on the beach or in the water," she said. "I always say when I'm walking on the beach, and I look at all the plastic, 'If only it was sea glass, because I would just be in heaven.'"