Video: Making a Bead

What does it look like to make a bead? Well - a little like this. Show this to your friends that you haven't managed to convince to come into the studio. Show it to your customers. Explain about the glass and the temperatures and the shocking. You can even explain that dots look a lot better when you make them, because I was kinda rusty doing these.

This isn't so helpful as a teaching video - but it really has a nice dramatic punch with all the non-filtered light and the gooey glass.

Video: Glass Fish

This video is quite interesting. This is a British Museum video,  made at Corning. I would have liked it a little better if they had shown the original vessel that was being replicated.





For lampworkers, it's always interesting to watch glass blowers work, to see the differences, and the similarities in working techniques.

For instance - watch how he works the lips - even when the glass has lost it's glow - the clear is still hot enough to move. In general - the significant difference in thermal mass is what allows blowers to spend so long out of the furnace that I am sitting here thinking - "ahhh, it's gonna crack, warm that sucker back up ... . " You get kind of twitchy about that sort of thing as a lampworker, especially when you teach.

The technique for the clear fin is pretty cool too - the two ribbons of glass, and then tweeze into shape. We could do that.

The coolest part is at the end, clearing up the neck of the vessel. I haven't seen that method used for cracking glass before. Way cool. 

Another interesting thing is that this seems to be some sort of vessel or vase - but you couldn't stand it up on end - does it balance sitting on an angle on the lips and the fins? Is it a sort of decanter?

Anyway - cool stuff.

This is a test

This is just a little test clip (about 40 seconds) - I just want to see how this is looking online. I'm currently working w Catherine Winter (aka Sailorgirl) to produce a short video clip on making beads - as a general info for the non-beadmaker - and I'm concerned about the mpeg compression artifacts (the pixelation in the background) - just wanted to see if it looked as bad online.

I had the original files compressed because of the massive amount of space that video files take - but I may have overdone it. Drat!