Father and son glassblowers craft one-of-a-kinda artwork for a popular Jekyll event.
BY RICHARD L. ELDREDGE
In early October, a few months before thousands of treasure hunters make their annual descent on Jekyll Island, glassblowing artists Mark and Marcus Ellinger begin firing up their oven in Stanwood, Washington. For the past 22 years, Mark, now joined in his Glass Quest studio by his son Marcus, has created the colorful hand-blown glass globes that serve as much-coveted prizes in the island’s winter scavenger hunt known as Island Treasures.
The popular off season event, held in January and February, is inspired by the work of East Coast fishermen, who in the early 1900s began using colorful hollow glass floats to mark their nets. By the 1950s, beachcombers were scouring the sand for globes that had broken loose. In 2002, the daily hunt known as Island Treasures (now formally led by the Jekyll Island Authority) was launched. Visitors and locals roam Beach Village, the Historic District, beaches, parks, and established paths throughout the island in search of clear plastic globes— during the hunt, they’re necessarily plastic—that are traded in for unique pieces of Ellinger glass art.
Each morning during their busy season, the Ellingers work nonstop for eight hours creating the globes. “You only get about 30 seconds to work with the glass,” explains Marcus. “We start with clear glass and then add the colors, the background colors, create a texture, slowly work a bubble into it, slowly break them off, and add the official Jekyll Island stamp on the bottom.”
Adds Mark: “This is not a craft you can set down, think about, and come back to. Once you start a piece you have to finish it immediately, all while withstanding a lot of heat.” On a busy day in the studio, the duo can crank out a singular glass globe every 10 minutes. But nothing is certain until the oven is opened the next day.
“You don’t know what it’s going to look like exactly until you take it out,” says Mark. “That’s the joy of it. It’s like Christmas morning every day.”
The Ellingers are creating joy far and wide on Jekyll Island each January and February: In 2024, around 200,000 people visited during the hunt.
“The event definitely has a cult following,” says Alexa Hawkins, the JIA’s senior director of marketing and communications. “And that’s thanks in no small part to the beautiful pieces the Ellingers create for us.”
Only 250 plastic globes are hidden around the island each winter. But the Ellingers supply the island with 1,700 of their glass works of art. The floats are sold year- round at the Guest Information Center, just outside the entrance gates to the island on the Causeway, and at the new 31•81 shop in the Historic District.
Occasionally, the Ellingers get a surprise visit from Island Treasures superfans in their Washington glass studios. “It’s humbling for us to meet them and hear they enjoy what we’ve created,” says Marcus. “They feel a connection to us because they own a piece of our art. In turn, that helps fuel the fire for us as artists.”
