The Fascinating Tiny Glass Bead
When visiting Seattle, you must go to the Chihuly Garden and Glass Museum celebrating the glassmaking artisan Dale Chihuly from Tacoma, Washington. Chihuly attended the first glass program in the United States at the University of Wisconsin in 1965, went on to the Rhode Island School of Design where he studied and established the glass program, then on to work at the Venini glass factory in Venice. In 1971, he co-founded Pilchuck Glass School in Washington State.
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The scale of Chihuly’s masterpieces is enormous compared to the tiny beads used to make beaded jewelry, but the material is the same: Glass. From garden-like structures that compete in size and beauty to nature, to wrist-size gardens beaded one at a time, glass beauty begins by the same means: the right ingredients and a burning passion. |
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At Hoopoe Jeweled Art, tiny glass beads are our burning passion.
Glass Beads are nothing new, adorning people and objects since the time of the Egyptian pyramids. Beads carved from wood, bones and shells, existed long before glass made its intro around 3500 years ago.
The rudimentary combination of sand, soda ash and limestone to make glass progressed with the addition of minerals, such as copper and gold, creating colorful glass, to the more complex chemical processes creating colorless or opaque glass. Multiple canes of glass were layered to create intricate designs known as millefiori or a thousand flowers. The Roman Empire went on to revolutionize glass-making with hotter, larger ovens, blowing pipes and trade routes that would push glass-making to remote areas of their empire.
Glass-making declined along with the Roman Empire and didn’t pick up speed again until revived by the Venetians in the 12th century. Indeed, techniques like Millefiori were lost to history until Venetian artisans rediscovered them in the 15th century – its most famous Millefiori, a star variation known as Rosetta or Chevron beads. In a glass-making world of men, Marietta, the daughter of artisan Angelo Barovier, “broke the glass ceiling” by crafting the Rosetta Bead which became the favored trade currency as far as Africa and even North America. As a women-owned business and artisan, I just love that.
When weaving new beaded designs, I so appreciate how fragile some beads, yet strong together; how endless shapes, patterns, colors, textures combine into a woven story of color. I contemplate the fascinating history of glass and the artisans who create it. And every day, I thank the Lord for the three basic elements that combine into glass: sand, soda ash and limestone. Perhaps it was the finger of God that fused these three basic elements into a block of futuristic ideas for a burgeoning artisan to see. (Shout out to Josh Lucas in the movie Sweet Home Alabama - a favorite of mine.)