Life is not a pipe dream.......or is it?

I started out looking for just pipes, but the rest of the great stuff on the beach changed my mind.  However, my quest to find a complete, or as near to complete pipe and stem continues.  I'm told that the stems can range from about 6 inches to up to 18 inches.  Below are my favorite pipes with a bit of stem and another picture of just pipe bowls.  Some of the bowls have a design on them, or a makers initials on them.  They range in age from the late 1600's ( the smaller, thicker bowls, to a larger size, dating to mid to late 1700"s to early 1800's.  Now that weed is now legal to smoke in Washington and Colorado, I may have a thriving business for the pipes.  Their one shot smoke capability makes them perfect for the quick hitter!

Put your junk away when you are finished playing with them......

That's what our parents always said when we were kids.  Well, the same applies to my finds on the foreshore.  They do look good in a big hurricane glass.  Very posh, ha ha, maybe the Queen will want to display this in the entry at Buckingham Palace!!

The foreshore can be a bit slippery at times.....

Some of my favorite pieces to collect is slipware.  It has a magical quality to it, with its gloss and wavy lines.  I think it would make for a beautiful mosaic table top!

Picking up the big pieces.....

On one trip to the foreshore I decided to pick up larger items such as pottery pieces, bottle parts, nails, tiles, and just about anything that seemed like it had some interesting feature.  Some had marks on the bottoms, others had finger imprints, others just make you wonder who used this last.  I particularly like picking up the handles of old tea cups, mugs and jugs.

some history......what do you think?

Photo's from the shoreline

I like to bring my camera along, never know what you might see

Another low tide, another pile of finds

Continued my scavenging of the foreshore, picking up similar relics of the past.  I had come upon a Mudlarker blog written by Julia and found her information quite relevant and revealing.  Armed with a little more knowledge of what I was looking at I was a little more selective in what I picked up.

My first collection of stuff Mudlarking

   Wow, I was like a small child grabbing all the candy when the Pinata breaks and spills onto the floor.  Bones, china, glass, clay pipe stems, pipe bowls, pottery, rusty nails, bent metal and just about anything that seemed old and interesting.  After a few hours i had about 10 lbs of treasure.  Now it was time to get back to my hotel, and rinse off the mud and see what I had accumulated

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And in the beginning....

so, after about 8 trips to the foreshore, i've decided to share my finds with my friends, co workers, and any enthusiast of mudlarking.  I've learned quite a bit already from reading the blogs of some serious mudlarks and historians easily accessed on Google.  My collecting started with picking up just about anything, thinking everything was a "treasure".. hence the 800 pipe stems i now have in a plastic jug.  ha ha.
Now, I take a longer look, and try to pick up things I believe are different, appealing, and fun to have.  Always in search of the complete pipe, i still have a fondness for the clay pipes of yesteryear, and save just about every bowl or small pipe I come across.  I have photographed most of my finds, so I can categorize them by age, use, distinction and use.  I hope you enjoy this effort