Anyone for beads?

Be it that I have moved into other fields of working with warm glass, bead making is still fascinating as it can truly be regarded as a "homebusiness"and has been (and still is) done by many cultures and communities in the traditional way.

The technology for glass beadmaking is among the oldest human arts, dating back 30,000 years Perhaps the earliest glass-like beads were Egyptian faience beads, a form of clay bead with a self-forming vitreous coating.

Glass beads are usually categorized by the method used to manipulate the glass. Most beads fall into three main categories: wound,drawn and molded.

Probably the earliest beads of true glass were made by the winding method (lampwork) . Glass at a temperature high enough to make it workable, or "ductile", is laid down or wound around a steel wire or mandrel coated in a clay slip called "bead release." The wound bead, while still hot, may be further shaped by manipulating with graphite, wood, stainless steel or marble tools and paddles. This process is called marvering, originating from the French word "marver" which translates to "marble". It can also be pressed into a mold in its molten state. While still hot, or after re-heating, the surface of the bead may be decorated with fine rods called stringers of colored glass. See how lampworking is done.

The drawing of glass is also very ancient. Evidence of large-scale drawn-glass beadmaking has been found by archeologists in India, at sites like Arekamedu dating to the 2nd century CE. The small drawn beads made by that industry have been called Indo-Pacific beads, because they may have been the single most widely traded item in history--found from the islands of the Pacific to Great Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. There are several methods for making drawn beads, but they all involve pulling a strand out of a gather of glass in such a way as to incorporate a bubble in the center of the strand to serve as the hole in the bead. In Arekamedu this was accomplished by inserting a hollow metal tube into the ball of hot glass and pulling the glass strand out around it, to form a continuous glass tube. In the Venetian bead industry, the molten glass was gathered on the end of a tool called the puntile, a bubble was incorporated into the center of a gather of molten glass, and a second puntile was attached before stretching the gather with its internal bubble into a long cane. The pulling was a skilled process, and canes were reportedly drawn to lengths up to 60 m long. The drawn tube was then chopped, producing individual drawn beads from its slices. The resulting beads were cooked or rolled in hot sand to round the edges without melting the holes closed; were sieved into sizes; and, usually, strung onto hanks for sale.

Today the drawn bead process has been mechanised and beads are extruded by machine. We know the resulting product better as seed bead, a small type of bead typically less than 6 mm, traditionally monochrome, and manufactured in very large quantities.

Pressed or molded beads have always been popular in Eastern European countries and are made by heating thick rods of glass to the molten thick honey stage and fed into a machine that stamps the glass, including a needle that pierces a hole. Like the drawn bead method, the beads are rolled in hot sand to remove flashing and soften seam lines. One `feed' of a hot rod might result in 10-20 beads, and a single operator can make thousands in a day. The Bohemian glass industry was known for its ability to copy more expensive beads, and produced molded glass "lion's teeth", "coral", and "shells", which were popular in the 19th and early 20th century Africa trade.

Some artists have also gone the route of using lead and borosilicate glass tubing (like they use for for neon signs) to make hollow blown beads .

Modern Ghana and other countries in Africa have a lively industry in beads molded from powdered glass. Women use powdered glass, grinded from commercially available glass seed beads and recycled glass, to make colourful beads. The molded ground glass, if painted into the mold, is called pate de verre, and the technique can be used to make beads, though pendants and cabochons are more typical.

Beads have grown in popularity and are widely used in a great varity of applications, far beyond the traditional concept of jewellery. Fashion, art, functional art ... the versatility of the humble bead ensures it will be around for another 30.000 years.