Ocean Beaches Glassblowing & Gallery

"For almost fifty years, Japan, our immediate neighbor across the Pacific to the west, has unknowingly been sending good-will messengers to our Pacific beaches in the form of lost fishing net floats. These runaways from her vast fishing industry still create as much mystery and enchantment as they did in 1918, when they first started to show up on the Oregon beaches." - excerpt from "Beachcombing for Japanese Floats", by Amos L. Wood, 1967 ( more excerpts here)

Since that time in 1967 that Mr. Wood wrote that, glassblowers have continued the long tradition of provididing floats to Oregon visitors. Only now, those floats are created to be decorative rather than functional.

Bob has a unique way of creating our floats, in that they all have some degree of texture on their surface - creating a tactile as well as visual experience. Bob's Floats are also made in a variety of sizes - all the way from the 3-4 inch "mini-float" to the very large 12" diameter.

Our floats can be "finished" in one of three ways. All Floats have an opening from where they're broken off the blowpipe, and Bob can:
1.) fuse molten glass over the opening and flatten it for the float to sit on,
2.) fuse molten glass over the opening and shape it into a hook for the float to hang from, or
3.) leave the opening intact to allow a light bulb to later be inserted to illuminate the float.

Current Floats for sale (click on photo to see more details):

Float Stands and Hangers for sale (click on photo to see more details):