Glass Beads: Tips, Tools, & Techniques for Learning the Craft
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Glass Beads - Louise Mehaffey
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Introduction
A Brief History of Beads
Tools and Materials
Basic Skills
Making Bead Shapes
Projects
1. The Basic Dot Bead
2. Flattened and Poked Dots
3. Layered and Stacked Dots
4. Petal Bead
5. Pulling a Stringer
6. Using a Stringer
7. Bubble or Eye Bead
8. Harlequin Bead
9. Masked Dots
10. Groovy Bead
11. Twisted Dots and Patterns
12. Raised Petals
13. Pulling Petals
14. Raking or Feathering
15. Making Twisties in Two and Three Colors
16. Christmas Tree
17. Snowman
18. Making and Using Frit
19. Purple Crackle Bead with Frit
20. Silver Stringer and Twisted Silver Stringer
21. Batik Bead Using Silver Stringer
22. Hollow Eye Bead
Surface Techniques, Inclusions, and Other Fun Stuff
Supplies and Resources
Bibliography
INTRODUCTION
Two elaborate beads by Louise Mehaffey.
This book is about how I make my mandrel-wound, lampworked glass beads. Mandrel-wound
means that I wrap the molten glass around a metal rod called a mandrel, which creates the hole in the bead. Lampworking
refers to using a torch to melt the glass. Before the development of modern torches, oil and wax lamps were used; the worker typically blew through a metal tube to get the flame hot enough to melt the glass. This tradition is the origin of the term, although the technique is much older. Sometimes these beads are referred to as flameworked or torchworked.
There are other ways of making glass beads, such as fusing and casting, and glass also can be lampworked into sculptures, perfume bottles, and goblets, but the focus of this book is mandrel-wound, lampworked glass beads. The beads can stand on their own as an art form or be used to create jewelry, either by simply stringing a few beads on a cord or making more elaborate pieces along with pearls, crystals, stone, or silver beads.
Louise Mehaffey in her studio.
My obsession with glass started in the 1970s. My house had an ugly plastic sidelight beside the front door and I decided to replace it with a stained-glass panel, so I signed up for a workshop in stained glass and have been hooked on glass ever since. For more than twenty years, I operated a stained-glass studio, doing mostly residential commissions. During that time, I experimented with sandblasting glass, painting and firing it in a kiln, and fusing. A lampworking workshop in 1998 started me in that direction, and I now practice that craft exclusively.
Glass is a wonderfully versatile material for an artist. It can be worked cold by cutting, grinding, sandblasting, painting, and engraving. It can be melted, shaped, and cast in a kiln. It can be worked in a furnace or with a torch and blown or shaped while molten. When it is cold, it is hard and brittle, but when it is molten, it is fluid.
The first several chapters talk about the use of glass beads historically and provide information on tools and equipment, basic skills, and bead shapes and colors. Most of the book is devoted to specific beads that you can make, starting with a simple round bead and progressing to more difficult ones. I have tried to put the projects in order of difficulty, but many of the skills overlap, and you can certainly work on them in any order you want. It’s best to master a particular skill before moving on. You may experience many hours or even days of frustration, but you will eventually catch on, so be persistent!
The process of lampworking with a mandrel.
Over the years, I have developed my own unique style and way of working. This is not necessarily the right way and certainly not the only way. Like any other art worth learning, this is an art that takes practice, so don’t be discouraged by wonky beads. Experiment. Learn to work with the glass, not fight it.
Warning: I am left-handed! Those of you who are right-handed will need to reverse hands from what’s shown in the photos.
Shells
More than forty thousand years ago, early Stone Age humans strung some natural materials and created the first beads. These were probably found objects that had holes already in them or were easily pierced, such as seeds, shells, teeth, bones, and later coral and amber. People during this period also figured out how to pierce soft stones, and as advances in tools were made, they learned how to drill, polish, engrave, and carve harder stones.
Beads have served many purposes, and they can tell us much about the cultures that created and treasured them. One of their first uses was probably spiritual or ritualistic, and even today some bead designs are valued for the spiritual properties some believe they have. The color blue was considered particularly powerful by many cultures, and lapis lazuli stone beads were highly treasured. Faience beads were a distinctive blue color, and copper colored the early glass beads a beautiful shade of blue-green.
In some cultures, beads were invaluable for trade, as currency, and to record information. Certain colors or designs identified the wearers as members of a particular tribe or group or indicated wealth or status. There are many ancient styles or designs of beads that modern beadmakers use for inspiration.
FAIENCE BEADS
The ancient Egyptians became masters of a technique that involved compacting a powdered mineral, usually quartz, and covering it with a glass glaze to create faience beads, a forerunner of glass beads. The first glass beads were probably created around four thousand years ago, but their exact origin is unknown.
MELON BEADS
Melon beads are round or oval with longitudinal grooves carved from hole to hole. They were made from different stones, but those reserved for royalty were from lapis lazuli. In some ancient cultures, this stone indicated wealth and power, but it may have had other meanings in other cultures. Many burials dating to 2450 BC at the Royal Cemetery of Ur in Mesopotamia had a single blue melon bead. This design is one that has lasted for thousands of years and is found in many cultures.
DOT-IN-CIRCLE BEADS
The dot-in-circle pattern is found on beads of many shapes and sizes, and among many cultures. It is so common that it seems likely to have had a powerful meaning, but the significance of this pattern is unknown. Some speculate that it was perhaps a forerunner to eye beads, but no research has been done to verify this.