I admire those artists who find the perfect medium and stick with it, I really do. Alas, I'm not so faithful, being rather more polyamorous in my pursuits. Thus I've tried—and enjoyed—any number of media. Currently I'm focused on making glass beads, which doesn't leave me a lot of time for other activities; and as much as I love making glass beads (and all the other things I've tried) I've said it before and I'll say it again: bead stringing is probably as close as I'll get to a true love.
So I was delighted to have an excuse to string these two copper lumpens. As with the peach and purple lumpens, above, I made these for Page, using her beads. Unlike them, however, these have significant semi-precious components, rutilated quartz and goldstone (goldstone beads are usually classified that way, even though technically, they're glass!) in addition to the beautiful pearls.
Because I strung these from beginning to end, I started at the clasp, rather than dangle end (fewer cut ends, a bugbear of mine), and so they lack the more elaborate patterns by the clasp. Somewhat compensating (I hope) is the greater textural variety in the seed bead portion of the pieces.
Almost any bead stringer with pretensions to standards will refuse to use one sort of bead or another, and we're no exception; but our rejects are not the same. Thus I wouldn't’ve purchased the red and copper faceted czech on my own, pretty as it is; and Page was dubious about some of my metal bead choices.
But I think both pieces came out very well. Note that the one with gold leaf glass accents on the sides has the bottom pixie bead as a dangle, rather than immediately below the focals (neither of which are frosted) as with the one with all three pixie ‘framing beads’. Though it's fair to say it's accidental in that I'd forgotten it and didn't want to undo several dangles, I decided the reason I'd forgotten it was that the piece looked better that way.
Glass, mixed noble metals, quartz. Strung on beadalon. September 2002
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
