many glass collectors are not yet companion with this type of glass collectible, unless they live along the western coasts of the US, or have seen them for sale at antique shops or give shops. Every indeed often, specially after strong storms accompanied by long-continued onshore Westerly winds have passed through, beachcombers in Oregon, Washington and early areas have found these hollow glass balls cast up onto the beach along with driftwood and early flotsam and jetsam. ( note : small fish floats are sometimes confused with looking glass target balls, which were used in trap shoot during the late victorian era. Please see this page here on Antique Glass Target Balls. )
These excavate spheres were used on ocean waters to support big scale commercial fish nets, ( much with many individual fishing nets strung in concert, sometimes several miles in extent ) and keep these nets from sinking. Floats range in size from a golf ball to a tennis testis or grapefruit, up to, in rare instances, a soccer ball or basketball .
Origin & early manufacture
Norway is believed to have been the first country to start production and use of glass fish floats. Christopher Faye, a norwegian merchant from Bergen, is credited for their invention in the early 1840s.
The first time these glass fishing floats are mentioned is in the production records for the Hadelands Glassverk ( Glassworks ) of Jevnaker, Norway, in 1842. The earliest evidence of glass floats actually being used by fishermen comes from Norway in 1844 where glass floats were on gill nets in the capital gull fisheries at Lofoten. however, it is believed by some researchers and collectors that glass floats had already been in habit in Norway and other scandinavian countries for many years before this time .
Japan apparently started using the glass floats american samoa early as 1910. By the 1940s, glass had obviously replaced wood or phellem floats for a good percentage of deep-sea or large-scale commercial fish operations throughout much of Japan, Europe, Russia, and North America .
several countries produced machine-made field glass floats, including the United States. In the U.S., during the 1930s or 1940s the Owens-Illinois Glass Company ( Diamond and egg-shaped with I ) ; Northwestern Glass Company, Seattle, Washington ( “ NW ” score ) ; Corning Glass Works ; and Crystallite Products, Glendale, California, manufactured machine-made floats, which are normally found in net glass. Some made by Northwestern Glass are known in amber .
Glass floats have, over the last several decades, for the most function been replaced by floats made of aluminum, plastic, or Styrofoam. however, it is slightly indecipherable whether glass float production for ocean fishing purposes is wholly obsolete……….yet. In the reference work Beachcombing the Pacific by Amos L. Wood ( published equally recently as 1987 ), Wood writes “ Blown glass floats are still the anchor of the oriental hanker trace tuna fishery with it ’ s hand labor operation, while formative floats are standard with the american salmon gill internet fishery that employs hydraulic-driven winch blocks to do the net income hauling. The handblown glass float has not been replaced by credit card in early kinds of oriental fishery, popular public opinion to the contrary, for the glass ice-cream soda is placid the least expensive [ my vehemence ]. ” obviously there are distillery some small glass-blowing operations in Japan and other asian countries that are producing floats actually made for fishing, but most floats today are probably being made more for the tourist collector trade than for actual fishing purposes .
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nowadays, the majority of methamphetamine fish floats that are adrift on the Pacific Ocean originated in Japan because it had a large deep sea fishing industry which made extensive manipulation of these floats ; other very similar-looking floats are/were besides made by glass companies located in Taiwan, Korea and China .
The capital majority of authentic glass fish floats ( those actually made for the fishing industry, NOT for the gift shop trade wind or made intentionally good for sale to collectors ), are made of field glass in some tad of AQUA ( bluish green or greenish blue ), or pale green .
Less coarse, but still found reasonably frequently in some areas ( Europe or Caribbean ), are floats in medium to dark greens, such as darkness olive green. other colors are a lot rare. Some floats are found in very picket amethyst ( purple ) glass. Most of those may have been originally clear, but have turned an amethyst color ( from exposure to ultra-violet rays of the sun ) if the methamphetamine contained adequate manganese. medium or black imperial ( authentic ) floats are highly barely .
Most authentic floats have many bubbles and impurities ( specks of carbon, firebrick, etc ) embedded inside the field glass. They were typically made partially, or wholly, of recycle field glass ( waste glass, cullet ) from previous bottles, including used japanese Saki wine bottles .
Colors that have occasionally been found in authentic floats include light to medium bluing ( not greenish blue ), brown, grey, shades of amber, cobalt blue, chicken, and the very rarest are believed to be in shades of loss or orange .
reproduction floats
Most floats that are in an unusual color such as cobalt bluing, dark purple, bright jaundiced, ample bright green, orange, or red, can be safely assumed to be a modern reproduction, made specially as a “ tourist give item ” unless there is firm evidence to prove otherwise ( mean, the float was actually found washed up on a beach ) .
Most color floats sold on internet auction sites are modern production ( repros ) that never saw avail “ in the baseless ”. Many of them are probably current ( or very recent ) products of Asia. The majority ( although surely not all ) of the replica / gift-shop floats ( replica, or “ fakes ” ) tend to have sparse, weaker walls, and normally do not have as many bubbles embedded in the glass. They are often covered with fallible, dilute, poorly-made web that would not stand up to actual hard use in the ocean environment. The most normally found floats range in size from about the size of an orange up to a grapefruit. other floats, both smaller, and much larger, are found. The largest floats are very hard to find. Although most fish floats are round ( ball-shaped ), there are several scarce types of floats known as “ rolling pins ” or “ rollers ” .
In many cases, the larger floats are broken when they are cast up onto rocky shores ( which is one cause why they are found so infrequently ). Their chances of being found unbroken are much better when they are cast by the surf onto a smooth, arenaceous, relatively level beach.
Read more: What is the Maritime Industry?
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Some percentage of floats are found with a boring “ crisp ” felt spirit, caused by the browse military action, i.e. rolling around on a arenaceous beach. Floats are much used as cosmetic accents in homes. Collectors sometimes arrange them on shelves, or in back-lit glass expose cases, or displayed artistically in cheery windows along with early cosmetic or collectible items such as shells, rocks, bottles, crab toilet markers, previous bouys and other maritime/ nautical artifacts .
The earliest floats, including most japanese glass fish floats, were handmade ( normally freeblown ) one by one, by a master glassblower. After being blown, floats were removed from the blowgun and sealed with a “ clitoris ”, “ temporary hookup ” ‘ or “ plug ” of molten glass, before being placed in a lehr ( cooling oven ). incidentally, this “ button ” is not the lapp thing as a ‘ pontil mark ’ as seen on bottles. Some hand-made floats of oriental origin were made by blowing the glass into a cast .
Some of the molds that were used are reported to have been made out of wood, although it is probable that most were made of alloy ( shed iron or steel ). Some percentage ( possibly 10 to 20 percentage ) of floats have some type of raised cross off on them that presumably indicates the glassmaker .
many of the floats made in Japan or Korea have markings, although alot of these marks are not identified. The record “ Beachcombing for japanese Glass Floats ” by Amos L. Wood ( mentioned at the bottom of this article ) illustrates a wide variety show of markings that have been documented on these floats, including examples from Japan, Korea, the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Czechoslovakia, Norway, and Portugal.
today, alot of the methamphetamine floats remaining in the ocean are stuck in a circular traffic pattern of ocean currents in the North Pacific. Off the eastern coast of Taiwan, the Kuroshio Current starts as a northern branch of the western-flowing North Equatorial Current. That current flows past Japan and finally meets the Arctic waters of the Oyashio Current. At this junction, the North Pacific Current ( or Drift ) is formed which travels east across the Pacific before gradually turning south to become the California Current .
The California Current pushes the water into the North Equatorial Current once again, and the cycle continues indefinitely. Although the number of glass floats can be assumed to be gradually decreasing, many floats ( probably millions of them ) are still drifting along on ocean currents. Heavy storms, specially those with potent and long-continued westerly winds, occasionally tug floats out of these large-scale current systems, and finally those floats may wind up on the beaches of the West coast, most normally those of Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Floats are occasionally found along the Baja California seashore. Port Heiden, in Alaska, has the distinction of being an area where many floats have been found, particularly after intense storms have been through the area .
At other locations around the Pacific Rim area, including Wake Island and Hawaii, floats are besides found. There are credibly many lost glass floats that are now more or less “ becalmed ” in the kernel of the big Pacific Ocean circulation “ coil ” ( reasonably similar to the “ Sargasso Sea ” region of the Atlantic Ocean ) drifting lento along with large quantities of early debris that has washed into the ocean from rivers and streams that flow from land masses encircling the entire Pacific Rim area .
Glass floats are besides found along some Atlantic Ocean beaches, including areas in the Caribbean, but not quite equally frequently as on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. Floats found in european areas might be more probably to be seen in “ true ” medium or dark greens, as compared to Asian floats which are more probably to be in shades of greenish blue. ( apparently, many of the older floats made in Great Britain appear in shades of dark olive green ) .
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REFERENCES
For much more information, I would heartily recommend the classic record on the subjugate : Beachcombing for Japanese Glass Floats, by Amos L. Wood. ( 1985 and earlier editions ). Some of the information on this web page is taken from that reference solve, and credit must be given to Mr. Wood for his extensive research on the capable. His follow-up book is called Beachcombing the Pacific, and in that book he discusses beachcombing for all kinds of matter to items, including those made of glass angstrom well as early materials .
besides, two other ( more recently published ) character books on glass floats include :
Read more: What is the Maritime Industry?
Glass Ball by Walter Pich ( 2004 ) .
Glass Fishing Floats of the World by Stu Farnsworth & Alan D. Rammer ( 2005 ). You can check out some reader reviews on those books at Amazon.com .