Fishing Floats

After my most recent blog post, a friend sent me a link to information about Japanese glass fishing floats. She commented that the necklaces that I have been working on were reminiscent of the floats, and I couldn't agree more! Growing up, my mother actually had a collection of these beautiful glass pieces, which are used to hold fishing nets afloat. The craft of these pieces are extraordinary, and the delicacy paired with the utility of the floats is a poetic conundrum.

Glass floats such as this have been used for decades in Japan to buoy fishing nets used by coastal and open ocean commercial fishermen. Though used in other countries as well the floats produced in Japan are especially well known and collected. Glass floats which are lost at sea will often be found weeks, months or even decades later as far away as Hawaii and the beaches of North America.

Here are some images of the floats: