Hallmarking - What is it and Why?


Each piece of jewellery I create is hallmaked with Little Base Designs initials (LBD). I am registered with Goldsmiths Hall of London 

The Assay office take a small sample of the silver or gold and test it for its purity, to ensure it reaches the British standard required for a hallmark.





THE STORY OF SEA GLASS

For those, like me, who are intrigued by sea glass …..

The technical bit:

Sea glass is created when the pH of the salt water strips off the surface gloss and corrodes the outer layer of glass. Then the waves and sand, sandblast the surface and soften the edges.

Eighty percent of sea glass originates from bottles. The rest is from flat glass and tableware.

The softer and cheaper the glass the faster it corrodes.

That said however, it still takes 20-30 years for a broken bottle to be converted into frosted, rounded pieces of sea glass.

Older glass can be identified by its bubbles , which disappeared when glass production was automated in the 1920’s.

Orange is the rarest of all colours, partly because it was difficult to hold a consistent colour between batches but also because of a lack of demand. The chances of finding orange sea glass are as slim as 1 in 10,000 pieces collected.

The guaranteed way to produce a vibrant red was to add a small amount of gold, hence its rarity. The chances of finding red sea glass today are 1 in 5,000 pieces.

Uranium dioxide was used to produce a true yellow, which rivaled gold in scarcity.  Approximately 1 in 3,000 pieces found will be yellow.

Whereas green is estimated at 1 in 25, brown at 3 in 10 and white , the most common of all, at 4 in 10.

In all my years of collecting I have only found a few pieces of red and yellow  sea glass and one tiny scrap of orange.

Luckily for me I prefer the more common colours !!


I have also found one perfect, beautiful, aqua marble.