This project started out as a hollow blown boro bead to commemorate the beginning of a business; and the owner thought it would make a nice decoration for a steel door, the kind with the narrow, five-inch wide window. However, she worried about it banging against the door as it was opened. I didn't think this would be a huge problem, as it's borosilicate, but being cautious by nature, I decided to incorporate a display framework that would minimize the amplitude of the bead's swing: orginally I'd just planned to thread it on the end of 30cm long string.

full curtain. It's roughly 5” (125mm) wide. I wanted the purple seed beads to tie the red and blue together (and also insert the piece into its setting which is painted purple and green); but the natural lighting just illustrates that brownish cast to which manganese purple is so prone.

The sketch I came up with was a standard diamond pattern netting, with the boro bead hanging from the center bottom fringe. However, as I actually began to string the piece the regularity went out the window, as I couldn't resist looping the tigertail all about, and ended up with this less regular pattern. Unfortunately, the design dictated that three of the warps doubled back through the bottom corner crimps; and six pieces of .018 or .019 cable won't fit through standard 2x3 size crimps.

the focal, a striped rotation-of-axis blown boro bead with red and cobalt . It's bracketed with lead dotties, in blue-based czech lead and purple satake lead, which I find a little amusing.

So, though I probably made the bead late in December 2004 or early in 2005 and strung most of the project by mid-2005 it sat for months until a)I remembered to ask Page order me some extra large crimps, and b) remembered to bring them home.

Then I misplaced the crimps.

Finally, I located them, and finished the project early in 2006. —Obviously, given the way the focal hangs, this project isn't perfect, but after sitting around for months, I was suddenly confronted with a drop-deadline, and couldn't put any more time into it; and it has gotten me thinking about other small-scale bead-curtains. I do like the way the bead came out; it's one of my better efforts.

file created 10apr06. I photographed the min-curtain on a cloudy day with a thick piece of milky translucent plastic behind it. I wasn't thrilled with the way the purple seed beads came out, but I think the focal and its two bracketing beads are depicted in fairly true colors.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.