These pins are a wonderful example of the joys of series—of course, all of the pins are an overall series, but these pink and green pins illustrate especially well how a bead-stringer's mind works: just as with language, you start with small units which then can be built up into larger ones. Poetry, with its emphasis on form and compactness, perhaps makes for the strongest analogy.

Monet abstract bead pin. Silver, glass. January 2006, Page Brunner & Sylvus Tarn. All rights reserved.

The first pin is designed to be a little more conservative, that is, shorter. Keeping in mind that the layout of dangles is basically mirrored in the second pin, the biggest difference is the extension, with the twisted wire link underneath the green abstract (Monet) bead, which serves as the bead focal of these pins.

Long version of monet pin. Silver, glass. January 2006, Page Brunner & Sylvus Tarn. All rights reserved.

There are of course some minor differences, the biggest being the substitution of a striped pink rectangular bead for the striped leaf in the first version...which, if you stop and think about it, makes perfect sense, since the first pin is a visually denser, shorter (and thus ‘wider’, like leaf the bead) object overall, whereas the thinner, rectangular bead echoes the length and overall more rectangular shape the longer dangles give the ‘arty’ version.

By such adjustments, you can see the design process at work.

file created 9feb06. owing to less than stellar photography thanks go to f2E, who bemoans the green cast of the unfinished photo edit in top picture. The pink-to-grey gradation in the bottom nearly restored to the actual appearance the depth of color in the pink beads; now if I had only waited another 15 seconds for that dangle to stop moving ’afore I snapped the picture....

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