A while back, while I was tidying up web pages, I happened to find a too-dark image of this beautiful bracelet, and lo and behold, my gimp skills (mostly as a result of that photography class I took in ’18) improved[1] to the point where I was willing to show it. This piece was made back in the era of cheap silver, and it's luscious as a result—that amethyst set bali silver bead would be prohibitively expensive to make now.
Charm bracelet: lampwork beads of check, effetre & boro glass; swarovski crystals, bali silver; sterling silver. Beads by sylvus tarn & page brunner; designed & strung by page brunner. 7dec2006, 1/36s, f6.7, -0.7ev; Nikon coolpix8400; modifications 28jan2020
Because, again, the piece is so old, the dottie front and center has got to be boro, probably amber-purple: those kinds of striking high silver bearing glasses simply weren't available in the 104 coe glasses back then.[2] This bracelet was made during the height of my dottie production making years, and it shows. I doubt I could make dotties of that quality without a month or two of practise, first.
Another view, same camera, 1/12sec f7.5 -0.3ev. 11dec2006.[3] Better photography, but I really prefer the styling in the other; I'm kind of glad, therefore that I didn't find this realize it was the same piece till later, as I'm sure I would've been too lazy to put all the work in the image, above, otherwise.
There's one abstract in purple and red, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn that was the basis of the colour scheme, a somewhat unusual one for Page (me as well, actually...) The other beads are pixies. None of them are particularly sophisticated in design (though somewhat more in execution—they're harder to make than it looks!) but of course Page combined them to make this fabulous charm bracelet—and this series has informed my approach to charm bracelets ever since.
[1]That is, instead of just using the curves tool to lighten the image overall, I made dupes of it, lightened/brightened/messed, then combined the various layers at assorted opacities to get this result—which still ain't perfect, but looks pretty close to what I expect the authentic colours were...and how do I know this? Well, I still have some beads/glass in these exact colourways:)
[2]According to one of my teachers, they were in kugler or reichenbach furnaces glasses, but I never saw them...
[3]So, naturally, here's another image I took of the same bracelet a few days later, with better lighting—aside from resaving it from tif to jpg format, I didn't mess with it all.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
