01263 577338
sea glass jewellery
Amelia Vargo makes sea glass jewellery, and has been doing so since 2001. She formalised arv-jewellery as a business in 2005 with some help from The Princes Trust. She work from her studio at her home, and also, during the summer from her Tipi.
The work gives renewed importance to the found material – Sea glass. Imagine what the piece of sea glass was part of originally, some pieces are obvious; they still bear the name of ‘Coca-Cola’ or the traces of reinforcement in safety glass. Some are more mysterious. The range of colours is interesting as well. The most common colours being white, green and aqua, but, turquoise, cobalt blue and amber-brown shades are found too.
The sea glass is found on the local, North Norfolk beaches, where she walks her dog. Often, a piece of sea glass will be glinting amongst the flint pebbles - a speck of colour in amongst the greys and beige. Occasionally a piece of china will lie in waiting for Amelia to pick it up from the sand, the patterns and colours being distorted by the sea.
When the jewellery is being made the piece of sea glass will determine what it will be tansformed into. The shape, weight, and colour of the piece are important to the design. Often, Amelia will hold the piece in her hands to assess what to make. Some pieces are beautiful by themselves; others need more embellishments to make them into jewellery.
Sea glass is actually rubbish! It was once a useful object, a bottle, a lamp, a window, but the forces of nature have transformed it. First, broken into dangerous shards, then over a number of years (maybe even centuries) the edges are softened and shaped by the friction of salt and sand and of course the sea.
Amelia uses silver wire to accent the glass, trying to preserve the shape as much as possible. she loves the fact that each piece is unique; the nature of this material means that no two pieces can ever be alike.
Amelia uses hand tools as much as possible. Pliers, wire cutters and files being her preferred tools, though she does occasionally use a drill to make holes in a piece if she feels it would work best that way.
Contact Amelia to commission your very own piece of contemporary sea glass jewellery
Call Amelia on 01263 577338 or send an email to
