Beading with JC Herrell!

During the crazy last month of summer, I was able to fit in an intensive class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center.  I won a juried partial scholarship to take a class of my choice - I had already signed up to take the intensive class JC Herrell was teaching, so yay!

JC making a demo bead

Intensive classes at the Pittsburgh Glass Center mean 5 full days, 9-5, of learning and making beads with an awesome lampworker.  Most people also stay later, up until 10pm if they wish.  I, however, can never do that.  By 5pm I am pretty much done!  I never (get to) make beads for an 8 hour day, and that's just too much for me!

JC's class was called Color, Form and Line.  If you don't know JC's beads, here's some examples:

These are the beads in my own personal collection; they were purchased quite a long time ago:

The class was about enamels, how to use them, how to form a great bead, and how to do that awesome stringer work! We learned how to make some of her signature beads, including a poppy bead, a waterlillies bead, a tree bead.  How to use the enamel sifter the correct way, how to make those lines. 

Our very first exercise was - make a bead that's in your head using enamels, lines etc.  Then at the end of the week, the last exercise was to make that bead again, using the skills that we've learned throughout the week.  Here are my first "head beads"!

What was I going for?  The symbol is a Japanese Torii gate.  The colors to me were Asian, and the form was to look like a Japanese lantern.  Unfortunately, I had to miss the very last class because I was going to Scotland, but I'll make a bead soon, in my new interpretation, and show you when I finish it!

Here are some examples of JC's beads and mine - wonder if you can tell the difference???

JC's Tree Bead and Starry Night Bead 

My tree bead - not too bad!

My Starry Night Bead - more starry than night...

 My fade beads - fading the enamel from light to dark/dark to light.  Trying to get the form.

My waterlillies bead - not great, but pretty good.  I'd use it for a fan pull!

All in all, I very much enjoyed this class. I almost never do stringer work, because I tend to be a bit of a perfectionist, and if I can't finish my line without getting that "dot" at the end, I don't like it! But I think with the skills I learned from JC, I will try again. I very much enjoyed using the enamel sifter and some of the tips and tricks she gave us regarding making enamel stringer and how to get that fade or ombre look. I also very much appreciate the time it takes to get that perfectly formed bead - I learned a lot about taking my time and how to finish the ends of beads! I hope when I get time in the near future to put these skills to use!

Here's a bead I purchased for my daughter:

And how lucky am I?  I WON this bead in the raffle at the end of the class!

I haven't taken an intensive class at the Pittsburgh Glass Center for well over 6 years, and I'm glad I did.  In my next post, I'll be able to show you my work from a Polymer Clay class I am taking with Heather Powers at Andrew Thornton's place, Allegory Gallery!  I look forward to even more fun!

Susan Kennedy

A Little Glass Vocabulary Lesson

When I mentioned I was stuck for an idea to write about today, my teammate Lesley Watt mentioned to me that she would like to have a little lesson in some lampwork vocaulary!  Perfect, I said, 'cuz I know that!  So today I'm going to tell you about three lampwork words you may have heard but don't really know what they are - frit, murrini and stringer.

FRIT

The above photo is a picture of frit by Robin Koza of Glass Diversions.  Frit is little ground up pieces of glass that you roll your bead in.  You can either melt it in all the way or leave it somewhat raised for different effects.  There are many producers of frit - Robin's frit blends were the first I was introduced to so I chose to highlight hers here.  But if you google glass frit, you will find many people who make gorgeous frit blends.

Here are some examples of my beads with frit:

 The above is an example of frit, melted in after the base bead was wrapped in silver foil.  You can see the reaction the frit and silver foil give to the beads!

 This is an example of a bead rolled in clear frit, and left somewhat raised.  It gives the impression of sugar or gumdrop candy!

 This is an example of frit over enamel powder (very finely ground glass) - this frit is raku frit, which gives varied colors when worked in different areas of the flame - either hotter or cooler.

 These beads were made by dipping the hot end of a glass rod in frit, then melting in the frit all the the way and making the bead, so it looks like swirls.

 Finally, these beads were made by rolling the disk in frit and only barely melting it in, to make it raised and resemble sand.

MURRINI

Murrini are little chips of glass that you apply to beads.  Murrini can be very simple, or very complex.  Murrini start out by layering colors of glass in specific design patterns to achieve a certain look.  The big blob of glass that results is then pulled down by heating it very slowly and stretching the blob out until it becomes basically the same dimensions as a glass rod.  The rod that results is then cut into "chips" with tile cutters and then applied to beads. 

An example of a simple murrini I made can be seen in this bead:

Here, I striped a rod of ivory glass with red-brown, heated it until the lines were fused with the ivory glass, and pulled it into a rod that I could nip into smaller chips.

Some people make really fantastic murrini - Lori and Kim for example:

Jennifer Cameron uses a lot of murrini by Lori and Kim to make her awesome headpins:

And Donna Millard, who I admire for the videos she shows of her large gathers before she pulls her murrini rods! This murrini by Donna:

 Made these beads:

 STRINGER

And finally, stringer.  Stringer is glass that is pulled off a molten rod of glass to make a thin strand of glass, used in decoration.  I can think of many people who have amazing "stringer control" - which means the ability to control how you apply your stringer onto a bead while controlling the heat used to apply it.  Here are some examples (the stringers are all the little lines you see "drawn" on the design of the bead):

Jelveh Jafarian

 JC Herrell

Holly Cooper

So there you have it, a simple lesson on three lampwork vocabulary words!  I hope you enjoyed the post today, as well as the eye candy!

Susan Kennedy
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