My father wandered through four majors in college, among them mathematics and economics. He then worked for the same company all during the years I was growing up, finally retiring from it; like many people he detested with a passion job-hunting. So he fixed his wanderlust by switching jobs within the company, and brought to bear his thorough approach to various work-place related concerns. One of them, I dimly recall, was dealing with a UNIVAC computer (you know, one of those deals that filled an entire room, had vacuum tubes and had a mean run time of seven seconds. Can you imagine? This machine was valuable enough that it was worth that kind of maintenance.)
Anyway. One of the things he told me was: always assign stock numbers. Not names, not descriptions, not alphanumeric combinations, but stock numbers. (Also, not to try and code relationships into the numbers, because they eventually will break down when some unantcipated product comes down the pipe. Nevertheless, this is beguiling, for any number of folks do it—my business partner and Glass Alchemy being two that immediately spring to mind. So far, both systems show minor cracks, but the products lines are simple enough that it's still a help. My dad, on the other hand, dealt with thousands of inventory items.)
Because, of course, how else are you to create a database that incontrovertibly links the product with its data otherwise? He's right of course, so why don't people do this? Well, because in the real world, glass and beads and jewelry is not made by machine, but by people, and human variation inevitably creeps in. Thus, you're looking at some item, and wondering, ‘what bin do I put this in? It's sorta like item A, and sorta B, and moreover, if I kept track of every single variation, stock numbers would become effectively meaningless, cuz I'd have to generate a new one for every item.’
In other words, the jewlery we make, the beads I make, even the glass I purchase, all varies about some standard. It's up to my partner, or me, or the glass manufacturer to decide whether this batch of stuff falls within some set of parameters, or out of it. Odd as it seems, part of our artistry is to decide whether this is X color, and if it's not the same X as last time—let's say it's X’, then we might make a whole host of other adjustments to give the feel of the original X.
And this is not only true of our jewelry or our beads, but of my glass as well. I understand that dichro is gonna vary with the conditions. Nevertheless I wish CBS would assign stock numbers to their products. —Bullseye has a rather clever way of dealing with this: they have humans who check each batch of glass, and if it's not close enough to the standard sample, they sell it as curious, at a slightly discounted price. (Though it doesn't work perfectly—I have a tube of spring green stringer that is far too yellow for my taste.) Even if it meant dichro 1st quality color-standard colors went up, I think this is a great way to deal with the problem. —At any rate, here's my effort to regularize my understanding of dichro colors.
assortment of 104 coe dichro color stips. transcription of back-of-envelope notes before. sticker indicates arrow springs description.
(sticker) 1. silver premium
(sticker) 2. premium green/pink
(sticker) 3. premium green/magenta (U104)
(sticker) 4. premium green/magenta morr[etti?]
(sticker) 5. standard Black Cherry
(sticker) 6. standard cyan/dark dark red (6&7 linked with curly brace)
(sticker) 7. standard candy apple
8.
9. (salmon)
10. (yellow)
11. (same as 12)
(sticker) 12. cyan/copper Morr
13. goldgreen
(sticker) 14. standard magenta/green U104
15. aqua blue (pink/teal?)
16. tru blue (yellow/blue?)
17. standard violet U104 (presumeably sticker)
18. (page magenta)
Notes: U104 stands for Uroborous 104coe. I like the uroborous brand better—black sheet effetre boils like crazy, and tends to come in thicker, harder to use strips. ‘Sticker’ meant I still had the original sticker, with description on the glass. Parenthetical color/color notes are my best guess as to the official name if I'd already removed sticker. Next time I’ guess I'll take pix sooner!
file created 24oct06; tags revamped 13nov17.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
