Intense Black Stringer

Intense Black - a true black. A black that is supposed to stay black. The trade-off is its higher price and that it does some funny things when reacting with other glass - particularly when given a lot of heat.

But this batch - or rather two batches - seem different.







These two are a white base - sorry, don't know which white -  but it's not Anice, with intense black dots. Batch 1 on the left (which was unpackaged) and Batch 2 on the right - which came packaged and labeled. Both have webbed quite spectacularly, and both are showing rather more colour than I expected. Both of these got a lot of heat. I noticed that the packaged Batch 2 glass is a lot softer, and melts faster - even though they were both the same diameter.

 Here, on ivory, Batch 1 on the left, Batch 2 on the right. Oddly - very little webbing - just a smidge on the left bead, and these got a lot of heat.

 This bicone tablet bead is an ivory base with the batch 2 glass streaked, heated and swirled. Again, oddly less webbing than I would have expected.

 I am really digging the Grumpy Owl image that appeared, however.

 I dunno - have I gotten rusty? Are these some subtle variant of Intense Black? Is my memory playing tricks on me?

Which is ultimately why I write this blog - so I can look stuff up on it!