Hello,
This is my first post, and I am hoping that it will be interesting to some, and perhaps we can all be the recipients of some hard-to-find history.
I have been collecting glass fishing floats ever since I found my first float together with my wife, on Shi Shi Beach in 1977. The floats that we found that day, and for the eight years that followed, while living on and beachcombing the coast of Washington State, were all Japanese.
In 1985 we left Washington State, and moved across country to New Jersey. Since that time my passion for glass floats has changed from finding and collecting Japanese-made floats to being a collector of American, British and European glass floats.
I currently am researching the glass float history and the maker's of the floats using the floats' maker's markings as a guide, and am finding that the history and who their makers were is very difficult to find. Most all of the glass houses are now out of business, and their records while illusive, are hopefully, hidden away in some library or other archive. My collection is fairly large, and the float's themselves are beautiful works of glass art--an art that I am beginning to realize is practically unknown within the glass world.
I would appreciate some feedback from interested members if you care to know more about floats, or perhaps can add to the store of knowledge that exists about them. Thanks