Pure Sea Glass: Discovering Nature's Vanishing Gems
Richard LaMottegrew up in southeastern Virginia and has made frequent trips to the Outer Banks of North Carolina over four decades. He currently resides on Maryland’s Eastern Shore where his wife, Nancy, started a sea-glass jewelry business using shards from the nearby Chesapeake Bay. While researching glass history for a lecture in 2002, he began to pursue answers to questions posed by his wife’s customers. This led to more extensive research into glass colors, as well as the physics and chemistry behind the glass forms found in a shoreline environment.Since 1984, Richard has worked for a water analysis company with products that rely heavily on detailed color matching and has written two consumer handbooks on water testing.In his spare time, he has spent hours on the Chesapeake carefully studying close to 30,000 shards of sea glass to produce this in-depth study.Celia Pearsonhas been an assignment and fine art photographer for over 25 years. As principal of Pearson Photography in Annapolis, Maryland she has earned a national reputation for her photographs of designed spaces. Her images have appeared in a variety of publications includingCoastal Living, Chesapeake Life, Style Magazine, Metropolitan HomeandSouthern Accents.As a child, Celia summered on the Maine coast. Her love of the shore is apparent in the recurring studies of its treasures that appear in her fine art photographs. Gallery representation on the East Coast includes the Carla Massoni Gallery in Chestertown, Maryland, where she first met Richard LaMotte. When he asked Celia to photographPure SEA GLASS, she was intrigued by the notion of exploring the LaMotte’s collection of sea glass with her camera. Not only was she captivated by its luminous qualities, but she also discovered an unanticipated beauty in the man0made forms from which sea glass derives. For more, please visit www.celiapearson.com.