(Editor’s note: DeeDee Wood is the owner of Black Cat Curiosities, an online antiques research and sales venue. This is Part 1 of this year’s annual Antique Discovery ‘Road Trip.’)
Sea glass was once bottles, shards of pottery from plates and other household ceramics. (Photo by DeeDee Wood)
It’s antique road trip time again, when normally for a few months out of the year, shops, museums or venues are visited. This month, the shores of the Chesapeake Bay are our venue, with the very thing we discuss, antiques, washed ashore as forgotten treasures to find.
As you stroll along anywhere on the Bay, as waves roll in and out, you will find treasures from long ago, that are parts of antiques, technically.
Sea glass was once bottles, shards of pottery from plates and other household ceramics are now smooth pieces, rounded out with time, their patterns still viewable, regal floral motifs, flow blue colors.
There are also ropes, shoes, buoys, old fishing parts, you name it. Now and then an old sign might drift ashore, only a few letters visible.
You might wonder why and how these antique parts lazily wash ashore. Before modern landfills, trash and broken household items were tossed off docks, thrown into watery outlets, and water is a convenient disposal site.
Eventually, over time, this trash either completely dissolved and became part of the waters, or it transformed, with ebb and flow of the mighty Chesapeake, into something changed.
Sea glass was once old bottles and glass items, for example, but now is used for all sorts of art and projects, including jewelry and windchimes.
Storms play a big part in the transformed antiques of yesteryear washing ashore.
The mighty Chesapeake Bay loses shoreline yearly, exposing old colonial homesite refuse stuck in the muds of the banks, old Victorian dumpsites, and farm machinery and parts.
As the waves polish and ebb, interesting antique parts flow onto shore, to be found by an interested visitor.
When a storm rolls in, powerful tides can strip away old sand bars, creating treasures that expose themselves.
Many a knowledgeable Bay shore hunter knows to search a beach right after a storm.
Hurricanes and summer upheavals in the waters produce sea glass, old machinery, ropes, fishing buoys and anything else that you might imagine. Items can also be found caught in grass shorelines, inside holes from breaker rocks and more.
Old shipwrecks can wash ashore. The Chesapeake Bay has thousands of documented shipwrecks over time.
While it is unlikely a chest of gold will appear on shore from a ship’s cargo area, one might find old clay pipes, iron fittings, maritime parts off ships, even bottle fragments.
Sometimes, if extremely lucky, a name or number can be seen on these items.
Last, but not least, is the commercial fishing industry, that leaves history behind to find. Net weights, crab pots, oyster tongs, neat buoys bobbing about and rope. There is a heavy interest in old maritime fishing industry items, as they have nostalgia and meaning for people who know the shore.
Next time you are walking along the shores of the stunning Chesapeake Bay, look out not only over the horizon, but also down.
You might just see an antique item from days gone by, yet molded and changed by the ebbs and flow of time and water, turning it into something unique, yet familiar.
