North American Sea Glass Association Virtual Festival 2021: Nightlarking with Jason Sandy

[Music] hey everyone my name is jason and i'm a mud lark in london tonight i have something special planned for you we're going to go night larking in the summer months in london we experience some of the lowest ties of the year they're so low that parts of the foreshore only expose at this time of year so there's a really good chance of finding some historically significant artifacts along the river thames over the years i have found some really incredible artifacts while mud-liking at night for instance i have found many clay pipes that have long stems i've also discovered a complete 18th century apothecary bottle a pearl ring from the early 19th century a beautiful gold coin dated 1803 highly decorated buttons from the 18th century and i also discovered a large 8.2 carat garnet from sri lanka which is one of my best finds from the thames let's go night larking and see what we can find i'm sure we'll discover some incredible artifacts and also experience some beautiful scenery along the river thames let's go [Music] to go mudlarking in london everyone must have a license from the port of london authority all artifacts which are 300 years or older must be reported to the museum of london digging and scraping along the north bank are strictly prohibited fortunately i have special permission because i am a member of the society of thames mudlarks [Music] i wonder what that is a key chain or something little look at that see the design on that possibly from the commonwealth period in the mid 17th century a palm tree is depicted on this cloth seal in the 16th century cloth represented 90 of england's exports and london controlled almost 80 percent of this export trade which was shipped abroad from the river thames oh what's that oh it's another seal looks like it has a crown on it of some type i have to clean it up and look at it at home between the 13th and 18th centuries claw seals made of lead were used as a means of identification regulation and quality control of cloth produced in britain these seals were fixed to a cloth as evidence that the correct tax had been paid the face of king william iii is depicted on this late 17th century claw seal which i found while nightlarking [Music] [Applause] [Music] um wonder what that is nice little coins very thin it's probably old i'll have to give it a clean when we get home but i think i see a cross on this side you see that this coin cleaned up very nicely yeah do you see the crown at the top there it's absolutely gorgeous it's got a kind of greek cross here on the reverse and it has the date 1783 and i was able to identify this on the internet and it's actually a sardinian coin from the 18th century so it must have been dropped in the thames potentially from a sailor from sardinia that was bringing goods to london importing goods from sardinia in the 18th century amazing [Music] oh i just spotted a clay marble down here see the round thing right there there you go let's pick it up yeah beautiful clay marble i wonder what kid lost cis while they were playing along the thames nice one [Music] so is that mud lurking this evening with anna hello here she is say hello hi pleased to meet you anna has discovered some incredible glass bottles along the river thames and other locations in britain i simply love the various shapes sizes and colors of these beautiful historic bottles [Music] see a clay pipe just laying down the foreshore it's probably from the 18th century the stem would have been a lot longer but uh yeah nice little artifact typical thames fine i see a little lead token here see if i can zoom in a little bit you see that little lead token here it's got the letter f written on it and i think it's got the other initial on the other side i can't read it it could be an r possibly there we go fr nice little lead token this is one of the biggest finds we mudlarks find on the thames you see this massive anchor obviously no muddler can take this home so they just are lying on the thumbs for foreshore waiting to be collected just abandoned here for centuries but they're beautiful some of them are very old this one's probably not that old but some of them are about 300 years old [Music] in this area you can see a lot of garnets you just look closely into my torch there's quite a few just in this small area i spotted quite a large one if i can find it again there we go it's a nice big red garnet from the towns absolutely gorgeous they really show up nicely in the uh in the torch light in the flashlight all over in this patch there's another big garnet right here do you see that right there that's a gorgeous big one [Music] so it's out mud larkin with anna tonight and we found a lovely smorgasbord of different artifacts from the thames these are all very stereotypical finds a lot of pins and aglets uh some coins uh medieval pottery 17th century pottery so there's wonderful cloth seals and some modern coins look at that is that a little clay marble it's very very light it's rather gorgeous a thumb print in a piece of pottery it's like a mark from the past if you put your thumb in there you're feeling the imprint of somebody from hundreds of years ago well there's another one there actually on the base of this is that tudor yeah i think so based on the glaze and the kind of reddish fabric and then we have a bit of a bellamine is that here that looks like a bit of a bellamine pot this is a little bit of roman pottery here and how crazy is that it feels a bit like a biscuit they're always very dry aren't they they don't have a they weren't big on glazes the romans looks like black burnish wear probably a thousand seven hundred years old that's absolutely crazy this is star find of course an american scent that was that was fortuitous it was found today like a little tiny bit of hook for clothing you'll find so many of these so so many of bits of people's clothing end up on the foreshore like buttons and that's a beauty a little tudor button and this amazing little bead here i love finding beads but jason found this beautiful blue bead i think it's a glass if i tap it against my teeth i think i can say it's glass it's very uneven actually in the middle i don't know the age of that they're very hard to date actually there's a lot of debate about how old things are oh yes this is another star jason fine he's got his own little periscope which is good helps him see things he found my key on the foreshore one time which was amazing i lost it two times went over it and jason found it at night so i think i'd have missed this i think it's a little bit of a buckle yeah maybe a little bit that's incredible isn't it yeah so some gentleman was walking along hundreds of years ago and cursed because he lost his buckle on the foreshore so i really like this little pipe it doesn't have a stem a bit of a puritan i like them to have stems but i think that's about i'd say 16 10 to 16 40. which is rather amazing isn't it so that's only about 30 years after tobacco was introduced to england beautiful yeah stunning and then i love these this isn't they're not really gold thames gilding they've been in the mud they've just come out very recently they're pins in there and these are aglets you can see them properly so those would have been used on the ends of dangly bits of lace like the ends of the equivalent to the end of a shoelace but dangling off clothes and they've made this sort of beautiful blingy shine to things which is wonderful they're resting on a bit of old leather that could be about three or four hundred years old that leather i have to make sure it doesn't dry out and these are beautiful bits of pottery that's called staffordshire slipwear everyone in 18th century england would have been eating off that in taverns and that's just really beautiful painted a little bit of delft and then here this handle is rather magnificent it's so elegant i think it might be medieval i think you're right and it really is it's got beautiful elegant long lines like a wonderful elegant lady so i think those are my favorite finds and of course i've got a massive set of teeth here um i collect those to show children but actually i might keep that one for myself because they look brutal i think they're sheep though that's a massive sheep so that's really the array of amazing finds and then mine as well here great it's been a successful [Music] evening [Music] walking along the river at night is a magical experience and a great way to see london from a different perspective the foreshore is quiet and serene currently most of the bridges in central london are beautifully illuminated as part of the longest public art commission in the world called illuminated river designed and programmed by new york-based artist leo villarreal this project is the first cohesive lighting vision for the thames bridges in central london celebrating the structures as architectural social and historical landmarks stretching for more than 3.2 miles in length the changing sequences of colorful light reveal the beauty of the existing architecture of london's bridges and their relationship to the river that flows beneath them the lighting draws attention to the bridges across the thames the relationship to one another and to the neighborhoods they connect on either bank this large-scale installation provides the public with the opportunity to enjoy the architectural beauty of london's bridges and gain an understanding of their relationship with a river flowing beneath them illumination on the first four bridges was unveiled in 2019 and five more bridges were completed in april 2021 it is a phenomenal experience to go night lurking under these wonderfully illuminated bridges hopefully the bright lights will help us find more artifacts lying on the [Music] foreshore [Music] this evening i'm headed to a beautiful part of the river in rutherhide which has a rich maritime history i'm meeting my good friend and fellow mudlark nicola white to go night lurking together low tide is varied late tonight so we decided to meet up for a few drinks along the river and enjoy the warm summer evening as the tide slowly receded below us we chatted and watched the sun slowly set over the city of london in the distance when the sun disappeared behind the skyline we put on our boots gloves knee pads and headlamps and headed down to the foreshore to start mud mudlarking hoping to find some historical treasures exposed by the receding tide [Music] it was a perfect evening for mudlarking the sky was painted with a stunning array of colors it was a breathtaking a magical experience [Music] a little piece of pottery here kind of nestled between the stones looks like it has two little oak leaves on it see that it's probably part of a teacup that looks like this rim of the teacup nice victorian transfer wear blue transfer wear see a little musket ball in this area here it's got a nice weight to it this would have been fired from a musket back in probably the 17 18th or 19th centuries [Music] [Music] so okay so there's a button here look i don't think uh that's plain oh but probably georgina yeah it's still a really nice button definitely absolutely probably off of a uniform yeah i'd say so yeah really nice find nice one i it's beauty i think so i think you're right it's quite nice isn't it is it metallic or is it it looks metallic yeah interesting i should have to um investigate it further when i get home nice this location we find a lot of ship snails you see all these nails down here they're copper nails you can see them here they're copper ships nails and they used to use brass and copper because uh on the ships they used to have a lot of gunpowder and if there were iron nails and something strikes the nails he would send a spark and blow up the boat with all the gunpowder on board so they use brass and copper nails in order to prevent that from happening nice bit of history in maritime history the vulcanite bottle stopper here are very very worn one but i always love finding these what are they victorian um yeah that's right they were actually paint patented in 1873 by henry j barrett okay interesting tip yes they were the first screw top um bottle top actually they came after the cod marble ah wow i just spotted something amazing wow looks like it's a hammer coin silver hammer coin let's see yeah that looks good looks probably a 16th century tudor clean it up when i get home but it's nice and thin made of pure silver beautiful piece of history just within this one small area just found a load of musket balls and some of it's pistol shot probably the smaller ones it just kind of shows the maritime history from this area nicola is a well-known artist who uses colorful glass shards to make beautiful works of art some of her best creations are glass fish there's quite a few bits of glass in this area yeah there's some nice little bits here i like the olive color right there oh this one yeah yeah so it's nice yeah you can see all the big variety of colors what does those actually work for the fish yeah see that that will be a nice head of a fish or all that way around and then we're looking for bits for the for the body and the fins all these little bits can be fitted together to be part of a fish body nice that's a nice piece it probably came from an old milk bottle you can see that lettering on there and it's always fun to add these pieces to a fish give them a little bit of a name nice there's a little blue piece blue glass is very rare in the river thames but nicola has found several pieces to make gorgeous cobalt blue fish some of the glass is even from blue poison bottles from the 19th century that's another lovely eye there and i'm liking that bit too it's obviously the neck of a bottle but it's um you know that will provide a nice little piece of texture with a fish nice piece that's a particular that is a beautiful piece that's the best bit that i've found so is that glass yellow yeah this is this is lovely it looks like it's come off of an old boat light ah yeah but that's stunning i mean that's a real thin shape as well so that's perfect perfect [Music] found something for you here nicola look at that beauty ray oh my goodness red oh probably off another ship light huh oh that's that kind of ripped appearance that's gorgeous look at that that's so special excellent yeah i always get very i i get excited when i find blue but even more excited when i find a red glass because that's ultra rare so it's a perfect shot that is perfect yeah [Music] see that's another nice piece for a for a head there so you would put it like that and then you you've got the fin going up there you know and then like that and then you slide it out on your head yeah and then you can go on like that you see and uh so you can kind of see how it can always quick how it can develop and then you've got this it could be used for a tail that could also be part of a tail and then you've got the other fin you can see how you build up yeah okay it's a beautiful evening on the thames tonight i'm out with nicola here we go hi nick hi there jason how are you i'm very well it's great to spend the evening model yeah absolutely we even had a cheeky point in the pub before we came out so what did we find tonight can you point out the highlights it's quite a nice little smorgasbord yes different finds it is a really lovely colorful section here isn't it well i've got lots of lovely glass for my glass fish but i've got to show you these two special pieces here one of which you found the red and the yellow glass probably from old ship lights actually so they're very special some beautiful bits of pottery here some we've got some other little pieces of old cooking pots that were in somebody's kitchen at some point i think that's some part of a pipkin could be yeah looks like it yeah some obligatory yeah absolutely some pipes pipes we've got a few buttons there's one here one here probably georgian buttons and a tiny bead another button awesome bottle stoppers oh nice nice glass bottle stopper lovely and i've got a vulcanite stopper yeah and you've got some things though as well yeah quite a bit of random bits of pottery a lot of transfer wear some clay pipe bowls musket balls pins copper nails yeah quite a nice little selection nice little key there as well so yeah we did well tonight yeah we did yeah it was a gorgeous evening such a beautiful sunset so yeah it's stunning the view over there yeah absolutely beautiful it's absolutely lovely yeah well thanks nick it's been fun oh my pleasure it was great to go mud locking with you jason i really hope you enjoy going on several night lurking adventures with me and my friends along the river thames special thanks to the north american sea glass association for inviting me to speak at this virtual festival you

Channel: Beachcombing Magazine

Views: 2,676

Rating: 4.9807692 out of 5

Keywords: sea glass, seaglass, nasga, north american sea glass association, virtual, festival, mudlarking, thames, london, history, mudlark, jason sandy

Id: QT53pWFatdo

Length: 27min 14sec (1634 seconds)

Published: Sat Aug 21 2021