Faux Roman Glass - Part II

Remember back in August when I wrote about trying to replicate Roman glass here?  I showed you photos of the first beads I made, trying to get the colors and finish the same, and also provided a tutorial for what I did.

My next foray into this finish was to make these cut flowers - I really enjoyed making them and you can find them in my SueBeads etsy store if you're interested.

However, what I wanted to do next was the replicate the beads from a "Cleopatra necklace" that was found in Siberia. These photos are from the Siberian Times 01 February 2013.  I also found out that this would not really be cosidered Roman glass but Egyptian glass, according to the article.

These beads have been dated to 2,400 years ago according to the article. It is surmised that the woman buried belonged to the "Pazyryk people" and was tribeswoman of  Princess Ukok.  It appears they were both buried in the 4th century BC. Scientists are seeking expert confirmation that the glass neclace is from ancient Egypt 'but it was surely made by a craftsmen from the Middle East. Nowhere else in the world had that technique at the time.'

I used the same technique as in my previous blog post, but wanted to replicate the shininess of the beads.  My thought was to use silver foil, before I put the dots on the bead.  So my steps were, make the base bead of pale aqua glass, wrap in silver foil, burnish and burn off silver foil, add the dot pattern, then dip in baking soda - I did this two times, and while I wanted to get some pitting, was careful in the flame to avoid over-pitting the surface.  Here's what I came up with!

So, they are not exact in color, I believe I would need to do a custom mix of colors to see if I could come up with the teal, I do think they are pretty darn close!  I'll probably continue this experiment at some point and I'll let you know what I come up with!  Thanks for stopping by!

Susan Kennedy