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About The Art
Lampwork beads have been around for centuries and the love of the art form equally as long. My beads are unique, one of a kind creations and you can be sure that when you own one of my pieces you will never see it being worn or being given as a gift by anyone else. I consider them to be miniature works of art unlike the mass produced glass beads so often found in bead shops. My beads ar handmade but then of course all lampwork glass beads are handmade so how do mine differ?
All beads have been thoughtfully designed, made with love, annealed and cleaned. Many of my beads use fine silver leaf and foil, dichroic glass, silver impregnated reactive glass and silver wire. This increases the cost of the bead but also adds immeasurably to it's unique nature. Every now and then I will use a bead press but most of my beads are hand shaped using only a graphite paddle. Most of my beads are focals and fairly large for lampwork. The larger the bead the more difficult it is to control the shape and heat distribution. This sometimes leads to failed beads through stress cracks or gravitational mishap and only the perfect beads ever make it to the bead section and jewellery section of my website.
More recently I have been developing techniques that combine lampwork and fusing - which incidently leads to a great deal more failures than success - the resulting pendants are simply lovely and I would be unable to reproduce them even if I wanted to.
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