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Birth of a Bead

I am adding this section to my site because it seems so many bead collectors really do not know what goes into the making of a beautiful lampwork bead.

We see them being sold by true lampwork artists (opposed to the foreign made beads that are cranked out for 10 cents an hour using forced labor) on ebay. The prices go from $1 to hundreds for a really special set.

At this point I am not going to even address the thousands of dollars in equipment and material each of us must have in order to create these mini masterpieces. Thank heaven all of us simply love the making of lampwork beads because it will be years before any of us could/would recoup that cost.

To start one has to decided what kind of beads you want to make. Then a selection of glass is made. We use rods of glass. These rods come in many colors as well as a number of companies. The most common are Moretti and Vetrofond glass from Italy. Then there are some pretty good American companies cropping up like Double Helix and CIM (Creation is Messy). Bullseye has been around for a long time.

The other companies are Kuglar (ASK 104), Lauscha, Satake and Riechenbach.
Glass rods are priced by the pound. The price ranges from $8 to $100 depending on the company and color. The least expensive glass comes from Italy. They have the most color variety and have been in business for a very long time.

The most used form of glass comes in rods and the most common size is 5 to 6 MM round and about 13" long. These rods come in a myriad of colors and more arrive on the scene each day. Lampworking is a very popular addiction today so as you can imagine the manufacturers of glass are ramping up to meet the need. Personally I look for the odd glass. Why? Because it's called "odd" and the manufacturers do not intend to make more. These most likely are test colors. When I run across an "odd" glass that I love or think has great potential I will immediately buy a couple of pounds and stick it aside so that I do not get caught in the sorry it's gone ... never to return. That happened last week to the very popular "river rock odd".

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Once you have selected your glass its time to make your stringers and reticello (twists). Today when I started this project it took me over an hour to make the 3 main twists and stringers. I normally always use a silvered ivory stringer because I love how it works with the opaque glass. I decided if I was going to use any of the metal foils (gold, silver or palladium). All of these items have to be set out ahead of time because once the bead is in the torch there is pretty much no time to do anything but keep it hot lest it thermal shock shooting molten glass all over everything including the lampworker.

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The stringers in this group are from top to bottom.

Silvered ivory
Light blue mix
Orange, yellow, red mix
Terra mix
Gold aventurine

Full picture description of how silvered ivory is made can be viewed here.

Some of these reticello (twists) can be quite complicated to make. For those of you who do not do lampwork it involves stacking short lengths of colored rods onto one another. Heating them to molten and then twisting while they are pulled into a beautiful twisted cane.
They are however well worth the effort in my opinion.
The 3rd reticello in the picture below had 12 different pieces of glass fused together before it was heated, twisted and pulled.

Full picture description of how reticello is made can be viewed here.

The reticello (twists) in this group are from top to bottom.

A core of dicroic glass and stringers of green and blue.
Red, 2 shades of yellow and red dicroic.
Purple, opalino pink, ivory, black stringers, amethyst transparent.
Clear core, turquoise stringers and teal stringers.
Clear core with intense black stringers.
Transparent stringers of purple, black and pink opaque stringers.
Rainbow dicroic core, black. purple and pink opaque stringers.

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Other materials used in lampwork bead making are the precious metals ... gold and silver leaf or foil, palladium, silver wire and mesh. Personally my choice are the foils simply because they are thicker. The leaf is so thin any little gust of wind will blow the stuff away. You can not touch it with your hands or it sticks to you enough that it's simply lost. I have had gold leaf blow onto my hands and it had to be washed off. Not good with an expensive material.

Another of my favorite materials is the dicroic glass. It is very easy to burn up in the heat. When it works it is gorgeous.

Dicroic is achieved by adding layers and layers of precious and semiprecious metals on a sheet of glass. This is a time consuming, high tech, process which turns plain glass into the blingy glass everyone loves.

The Dicroic colors are determined by the length of light waves passing through, or reflecting from, the glass. Colors, change depending on the formula, number of layers, temperature during the fusing process. Standard colors are made by adding 15 to 20 layers of metallic compound to glass. Premium colors have 30 to 35 layers.

An average price is $11 to $13 an ounce.

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Then we have frit. Frit is ground up glass that can be combined to make wonderful patterns on any core glass. Your bead is heated to molten and dipped into the glass frit and then melted into the core glass. As it melts it spreads into gorgeous patterns. If these are then coated with clear glass it is all magnified and the colors intensify.

For someone who loves color of course you can imagine I am also a frit collector. I have maybe 100 colors ... have I tried them all? NO! But they are there when I want or need them :)

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I love the fine silver wire. For those of you that have my beads you know I love the texture. Smooth beads are gorgeous too but give me a textured twist or raised dots and stringer and I am in love. Of late the suppliers have been selling wire mesh. It is fun because when it gets into the flame it separates and makes these neat little dots of silver in a grid. If you don't heat it to much you can see the mesh itself. It is fun to add for bead character.

The price of the precious metals varies by the market price on a daily basis.

With the materials assembled and ready the actual bead making process can begin. We start with a stainless steel rod called a "mandrel". This mandrel is coated on the end (where the glass is wound) with a bead release (a thin clay that softens with water). This bead release keeps the hot glass from sticking to the mandrel.

From this point on the artist takes over and the almighty governs the outcome. What the artist has in mind does not always occur. Because the bead must go into a hot kiln while the bead is still hot the true colors are do not appear until the kiln has cooled. Every lampworker I know waits on pins and needles to see what happens when the lid can be opened..

It is a fun process. The combination of color and design are endless.

On Ebay today there are many studio artist selling their beads. I keep an eye on the work of others. The buyers have a wonderful selection all of the time. The prices for these magnificent pieces of art is extremely low considering the process that must occur before a single bead or set is finished.

Thank heaven I love making these beads because it is clear selling them would never pay the rent. In all truth any of us lampworkers would get more dollars per hour by working at Taco Bell. So the pay and thrill we get is the creation itself and the person who loves that creation enough to spend their hard earned dollars on it.

Could life be better?
I think not :)