A Purple Prize

I found buried treasure yesterday. Well it is a treasure to me, maybe not everyone. My current find is a piece of purple campfire glass. I live near a large tract of BLM land that has been used by hunters and campers for decades and I am always picking up things on my dog walks, including bullet casings, old bones, hides, skulls, tin cans and broken glass.

Campfire glass is made when beer and liquor bottles are chucked into a fire by drunk campers and left to melt. I guess you could call it natural slumped glass, that is if getting drunk and smashing beer bottles on rocks could be considered natural.
These guys have probably had a wild time as the fire has to get pretty darn hot to melt glass. (around 1400 degrees F.)



Campfire glass can be found occasionally in campfire pits but is usually green, brown or clear. So to find this lovely lavender is very exciting, plus I know it must be pretty old. When was the last time you saw a bottle made from purple glass?
This particular piece has apparently melted around small rocks, which have made rock-like impressions in it. So it has an organic look. I plan to make a lovely found object assemblage jewelry piece from this gem.

This was an especially fruitful outing as I also found a bunch of painted glass pieces, textured glass, the bottom of an old Pepsi bottle and a nice glass handle from a coffee pot. There was so much glass that I just picked everything up right on the surface of what appears to be an old dump. Just imagine what is underground a few inches! I plan to do some diggin when I get the chance.