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当珠宝设计师吉娜?考尔(Gina Cower)在海滩上搜寻海玻璃时，她说自己看起来像一只人类螃蟹。她低着头，弯着腰，在海浪中上下滑动，失去了对时间的感觉。“我一直希望能找到一件比上一件更好的作品，”她在牛津的工作室吃午饭时告诉我。“几个小时后，我抬头一看，发现海滩上空无一人，我的肩膀都晒伤了。”

Anyone who has stumbled upon a piece of sea-tumbled glass will understand. It has the ability to transform magically from something ordinary to luminous treasure after a stint in the sea. Hold pieces up and each one will reflect the light differently, casting a unique glow.

任何一个偶然发现过一块海上翻滚的玻璃的人都会明白的。它有能力神奇地从一个普通的东西变成发光的宝藏后，在海里的一段时间。拿起碎片，每一块都将反射不同的光，发出独特的光芒。

There is no hard and fast rule about how long chunks of glass must spend in the waves before they are, the smoother and more unusual they become. “Perfect sea glass has no edge; it is worn away over the years, turning it from a large piece to a small, beautiful gem,” 50-year-old Cowen explains. “The color gives you a hint of age. If you find reds and ambers – glass we don’t make any more – the chances are you’ve found something that could be centuries old.”

没有硬性规定大块玻璃必须在波浪中停留多长时间，才能变得更光滑、更不寻常。“完美的海玻璃没有边缘;经过多年的磨损，它从一颗大宝石变成了一颗小而美丽的宝石。”50岁的考恩解释道。“这种颜色给你一种年龄的暗示。如果你找到了红酒和琥珀——我们不再做玻璃了——你很可能找到了可能有几百年历史的东西。”

To make her jewellery, Cowen polishes the pieces she finds in a rock tumbler, which removes their frosted surfaces. Some she sets in silver; others are suspended from a string of beads, or pierced with a diamond- tipped drill and threaded on to microfilament.

为了制作她的首饰，考恩把她在一个石头玻璃杯里找到的首饰擦得亮亮的，这样就能除去它们磨砂的表面。有些是银的;其他的则悬挂在一串珠子上，或者用镶钻钻穿，然后穿在微丝

上。

Her designs were sold at Liberty, London, in the late 1990s. Today, you may spot them in galleries, but she works mostly to commission, designing everything from anklets to engagement rings.

20世纪90年代末，她的设计在伦敦的利伯蒂出售。如今，你可能在画廊里看到它们，但她的工作主要是委托，设计从脚镯到订婚戒指的一切东西。

Her decision to become a jeweler came after stints in journalism and music management in her 20s and 30s. She was walking on a shingle beach near Cape Town, in her native South Africa, where she chanced upon a handful of sea glass, noticing how each piece had been shaped differently by the ocean. It was the start of a collection now stored in a huge glass cabinet that presides over her studio. Most stunning is her Victorian sea-glass collection, found on British beaches, although there are also pieces from as far afield as Fiji and Majorca.

她在20多岁和30多岁时曾在新闻和音乐管理领域工作过一段时间，之后她决定成为一名珠宝商。她走在南非开普敦附近的一个鹅卵石海滩上，偶然发现了一把海玻璃，注意到每一块玻璃都被大海塑造得千奇万异。这是一个收藏的开始，现在收藏在一个巨大的玻璃柜里，它占据了她的工作室。最令人惊叹的是她在英国海滩上发现的维多利亚时代的海玻璃收藏品，尽管也有来自遥远的斐济和马略卡岛的作品。

Her favorite hunting ground – and popular among collectors – is Seaham Beach in County Durham, the site of a Victorian glass factory that closed in 1921. Thousands of tonnes of glass ended up in the sea where, over the past century, it has been shaped and polished by the waves, providing Cowen with plenty of material.

她最喜欢的狩猎场——在收藏者中也很受欢迎——是杜伦郡(County Durham)的西汉姆海滩(Seaham Beach)。数千吨的玻璃落入大海，在过去的一个世纪里，它被海浪塑造和打磨，为考恩提供了大量的材料。

The creation of sea glass is a form of recycling, but more than that, it is an example of nature compensating for man’s folly.

海玻璃的发明是一种回收利用的形式，但更重要的是，它是大自然弥补人类愚蠢行为的一个例子。

“I like that an act of negligence has been turned into something positive,” says Cowen.

考恩说:“我很高兴一个疏忽的行为变成了积极的事情。”

Although no one considered the consequences of hurling glass into the sea in the 19th century, it turned out to be a sound process. Eventually, glass breaks down into sand. Today’s responsible attitude to its disposal, revolving around recycling where possible, is vastly superior, but it signals the end of the sea-glass era. “This is a window of opportunity,” says Cowen. “Sea glass will eventually run out – one day, it will be rarer than diamonds.”

虽然在19世纪没有人考虑过向海里扔玻璃的后果，但事实证明这是一个合理的过程。最终，玻璃会分解成沙子。如今，人们对垃圾处理的态度是负责任的，只要有可能就会围绕着回收利用，这种态度要好得多，但它标志着“玻璃时代”的结束。“这是一个机会之窗，”考恩说。“海玻璃最终会用完——总有一天，它会比钻石还稀有。”

The decline in supply, combined with an increase in demand, has produced a boom in the market. Where once people offered their collections to jewelers for free, now they are sold on eBay for hundreds of pounds. Even young collectors are wise to its potential. A 15-year-old girl recently sold her collection to Cowen to fund a school trip. “I ended up paying far too much for it,” says Cowen. “She’d photographed it very well.”

供应的减少加上需求的增加，造成了市场的繁荣。以前人们会把自己的收藏品免费送给珠宝商，现在这些收藏品在eBay上以数百英镑的价格出售。即使是年轻的收藏家也对它的潜力了如指掌。一个15岁的女孩最近把她的收藏品卖给了考恩，以资助一次学校旅行。考恩说:“结

果我花了太多钱。”“她拍得很好。”

Its eco-credentials lend sea glass further appeal, at a time when people have started to question jewellery’s origins. Gold’s murky reputation for damaging the environment in the extraction process and the diamond industry’s poor human rights record play into the hands of designers who have chosen to work with a material that puts a waste product to use.

在人们开始质疑珠宝的起源之际，它的环保资质让海玻璃更具吸引力。黄金在开采过程中对环境造成破坏的坏名声和钻石行业糟糕的人权记录，正中设计师的心意，他们选择了一种可以利用废物的材料。

If the decline in sea glass seems to suggest we should receive old habits of dumping glass, Cowen refuses to condone it. “People have said to me, ‘Why don’t you secure future supplies by chunking glass into the sea, or polish new glass to make it look old?’ That’s not for me. It would take away the mystery. What I love is that there is always a story behind sea glass. You can imagine what object it might have been, where it travelled and how old it is. Everyone sees a different story in the sea piece.”

如果说海玻璃的减少似乎表明我们应该养成丢掉玻璃的旧习惯，考恩则拒绝宽恕这种行为。“人们对我说，‘你们为什么不把玻璃块扔进海里，或者把新玻璃打磨得看起来很旧，以保证未来的供应呢?’”“那不适合我。它会带走神秘感。我喜欢的是海玻璃背后总有一个故事。你可以想象它可能是什么物体，它去了哪里，它有多古老。每个人在《海洋》里看到的故事都不一样。”

In 50 years, plastic may be the only thing being washed up, but Cowen is confident artists will ways to put it to use. “These are already jewelers working with melted plastic,” she says. “People will find creative ways of working with whatever is available.”

50年后，塑料可能是唯一被冲上岸的东西，但考恩相信艺术家们会设法利用它。“这些已经是用熔化的塑料加工的珠宝商了，”她说。“人们会找到创造性的方法来处理任何可用的东西。”