This is the third fourth[1] go-round for this piece. It lasted not quite two years, which isn't bad: I photographed the last version at the beginning of July 2012, and here it is the beginning of July 2014.[2]
Orange dead mouse; shorter dangle redesigned; restrung, 06july2014.
Though I did look up the older post to get a sense of what had been lost—about an inch of green seed beads and accent beads dominated by a 12mm chinese faceted round crystal—I didn't bother to replicate it. I had this fun off-center sort of fruit looking bead I decided to put on the end; also a bicone pressed lampwork bead, not particularly well made, but interesting because of the color shifts resulting from the temp differentials of using the press (probably multiple times) on it—I'm guessing the glass is CiM phoenix or similar.
Before restring.
What's kind of interesting to me is where the thing broke—not at the top ring, nor where the dangles exit—I guessing, some of the larger beads, perhaps the vintage trapezoidal—got caught in something, and yanked off.
Shows the 49stranded cable near the main focal. That's quite a twist!
I have no idea how the client managed to twist up the tigertail in the middle of the beads, but it's certainly interesting to see the various kinks, desheathed cable, etc. Unfortunately I was lazy and shot this with the lensbaby, but I also pretty impressed by how ground the vertices of the facets on the orange faceted bead have become, from wear: usually I don't see that much even on vintage crystals! This is something that got a lot of hard use, and I'm very pleased it lasted so long—well over the year that I typically warranty things.
Back when I worked at Priya Imports, we had a woman come in the a long black onyx necklace of cornered cubes, perhaps 10mm, individually knotted. It was her favorite necklace and she brought it by every six months or so to have it restrung, uncomplainingly paying roughly the cost of an oil change; she considered it similar maintenance, and well worth the cost. I figured if I could get these things to last at least a year, I could sell them.
So maybe I finally will.
[1]However, only iterations 2 and 4 are documented, sorry.
[2]Actually I have a note in the original post that a shattered bead necessitated its restring a third time 04oct12, so subtracting the month or two it sat before I got around to redoing this time, puts us at 18 or 19 months—about a year and a half.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
