If this photo looks vaguely familar, it's because it's an earlier version of the one on the dottie index page.
Assorted dotties. Effetre, check glass and probably (in the pale pinks) bullseye as well. Shot 15jan2007, Nikon 8400 coolpix, 1/4sec, f7.1 e.v. 0, photoflood lighting.
I remember liking the original sample strand of dotties I made: one of a set of two identically coloured ones shared between Page and me, which made it easier for me to recreate exactly the beads she ordered. Even so, it wasn't a cure-all, because there's a fair amount of variation, that is, dye lots. At that time, check glass had a better range of tints of cobalt blue, so it's quite possible some of these beads are not actually effetre. Even now I have 054 blue that is lighter than other lots of 052 (the deepest is 060, and the lightest, theoretically is 050.)
Here's a photo of paired strands for both the dottie and pixie line, shot 13jun2006.
The pine green, if I recall correctly, was not only check glass, but a leaded check glass. That stuff had beautiful clarity, was noticeably heavier than the standard soda-lime, and required a different, lower-temperature annealing schedule. Other check colours (in their soda-lime line) include the fuchsia—I'm still working through the 10kg of the stuff I ordered 15 or 20 years ago—garnet, and definitely the golden brown. Some of those pretty true medium purples (as opposed to the standard plum manganese purple) were also check colours. Fortunately, most of these are now available in the effetre line, which is fortunate, as check glass is no longer available in the US, the one New Orleans based importer having given up the business after Katrina. Despite the check not having as good compatibility, I liked the thicker rods and generally better clarity.
25jan2007, nikon coolpix8400, 1/4sec, f7.5 -0.3 ev photoflood lighting, aperture priority mode.
Over time, I refined my own copy, making sure the beads were nicely made and the same size, but the important thing was that the colours be correct: some of Page's were actually spot'n’streak, which didn't matter, so long as the trailing glass was the right colour.
This version, which combines two exposures, (with a bit of cropping & rotation) is from 01Nov2007. Shot with a Nikon coolpix 990 1/4sec, f7.4, photoflood lighting. Besides the fact that I had a slightly better camera, note the dark blue-gray dottie added on the left and the substitution of the effetre emerald green for the leaded glass pine green dottie mid-strand.
So when we revamped the colours a bit, instead of cannibalizing the original, I made another for myself. If you look carefully at the longer strand, you can see six beads off on their own on the right, which represented discontinued or otherwise special colours. It should be fairly obvious by this point that we were constantly adjusting colours, particularly non-effetre colours such as the warm brown or the cold prussian blue-grey.
two dottie sample strands, circa 2007. Olympus E620, zuiko macro lens, approx f8, 1/125, lumopro manual flash, manual focus and mode.
The longer strand was probably made a year or three later, and obviously I still own both, though they were pretty dusty. I washed them, let ’em dried and re-photographed them (albeit a little too dark, so the image has been lightened slightly. I still enjoy them, and I s'pose I ought to make myself a choker out of them. Thing is, samples like these hang permanently on my studio wall, so I get to see them every time I go in there, whereas my jewelry is all packed away unless I wear it, which is mostly...hardly ever.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
