The Glory of Beads: Beadmaker‘s Show Reveals a Kaleidoscope of Color in Glass

May 14, 2003

People have had a fascination with beads that goes back thousands of years around the world. Open a pharoah‘s tomb and you‘ll find beads. Dig up an Ice Age grave and -- bingo -- beads. Check out archeological digs from Abyssinia to Zepatopec and you‘ll discover beads. Before there was currency, there were beads as a medium of exchange. It‘s no wonder explorers such as Captain Cook packed the holds of their ships with beads for trade; or that the Dutch were able to purchase Long Island from the Indians for a chest of beads. We‘ve always had beady eyes for beads.
In short, the bead craze has been around as long as the human race, and its influence is coming on strong in Northern Michigan as a new generation of beadmakers offers its take on an ancient art.
Locally, you‘ll have a chance to see how far beadmaking has advanced in the region at the Fire & Ice Beadmaker Show and Sale, to be held this Saturday, May 17 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at the Bayshore Resort in Traverse City at 833 E. Front Street (across from Taco Bell).
The show is being organized by beadmakers Lynn McGovern and Maria Perez-Bastian of Traverse City and their Fire & Ice Beadmakers guild of artisans from around the area. Some 17 vendors will be on hand from all over the midwest, including local bead shops Osiris and Nawbin. “On display will be a wide array of one-of-a-kind lampwork,
fused, fiber and beaded beads. The artists will be giving free demos where
designers can learn new and interesting ways to work with their beads. There
will also be a bead museum, featuring both ancient and present-day beads
from around the world,“ notes Karl Bastian in a release on the show.
The last time beads were this popular was during the hippie era of the ‘60s when stringing love beads was all the rage. The new bead movement, however, is of a greater and more artistic order, involving both the collecting of exotic and ancient beads from all over the world as well as the creation of beads in home workshops.
Lynn and Maria make beads in their respective homes using propane/oxygen torches to fuse and form a multitude of colors and patterns from a range of glass rods. A rod is heated to a molten state and turned on a metal shaft to form a bead. The glass is melted with a flame at 2,400 degrees Fahrenheit and then slowly cooled (annealed) at 960 degrees in a kiln. Gradually, the kiln‘s temperature is decreased to keep the bead from shattering from a sudden drop in temperature.
It can take as little as three minutes to make a common “spacer“ bead, to between 30-60 minutes to make “something fabulous“ such as a sculptural bead or an ornate pattern.
The urge to create beads ranges somewhere between a passion and an addiction. Lynn spends six hours a day creating beads in the studio outside her home, while Maria estimates she devotes 25 hours per week to beadmaking. “I‘ve worked with a lot of media but have never found anything that required more practice than this,“ Lynn says.
“The more time you spend on the torch, the better you get at beadmaking,“ Maria adds. “You have to learn the qualities of the different kinds of glass. Each color act differently in the flame. Some glass is really stiff and some just flows like honey.“
While beadmaking as an art form goes back many centuries to the intricate glass of Renaissance Venice or the jade beads of ancient China, the modern bead movement took wing only a generation ago in the U.S. During the ‘60s, the first setups for fusing glass with propane torches became available. “People started thinking they could have their own studios,“ Maria notes.
The secrets of creating glass beads -- guarded for centuries by the artisans of Europe -- were uncovered about 20 years ago by such diverse sources as the employees of Corning Glass in upstate New York and hippie beadmakers and artists in the Pacific Northwest. Today, beadmaking, collecting and jewelry is a passion that ranges from America‘s largest cities to its smallest towns.