I made dozens of variations of this design, which I duly photographed; but like a lot of my work from this era, the records are inexpensive prints from the local camera shop, and scanning them in would leave a lot to be desired. (There is in fact an old print of this pair of earrings, and the printing on the back gave me the date for the piece.)

75mm, aventurine diamond 11x12mm. sterling silver, austrian crystal, seed beads, dyed green agate, amethyst chip & 4mm, aventurine, assorted glass beads (including lg purple lampwork bead from India). June? 1992. Collection of Page Brunner.

So, it's unlikely that I'll ever feature the hordes of earrings of this type I made during the early 90s, but this one pair was preserved by my friend page (for the color scheme, which we both love) and what I can't get over looking at it now is how clunky and heavy the design is. The color scheme is all right, but I was trying to fit too large and too many brightly colored beads into too small a space: there needed to be more ‘background’ beads, of smaller size or lesser intensity, to create a rhythm. As the design stands, it's an all-over pattern, with insufficient breaks or constrictions in the flow of the design. To be fair, filling the space completely was at that time the aim—for one thing, it helped to disguise bent head pins.

There are other difficulties as well: note the bent wire on the central dangle of the lower earring, just below the agate diamond bead. I used 24ga wire because it was cheap and fit through more holes, but it bends too easily.

I would like to say that I'm beyond being cheap, and cramming too much in, but though I'm better, I still struggle against these tendancies.

stub, 30sep08; post 5oct08

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