Thursday, April 23, 2015

Extra Beads from Portway Andover Necklace

Below are a bunch of beads that I made for my Portway Andover Necklace project that did not make it into the final necklace for one reason or another. What I want to do for this blog post is talk a bit about some of these beads, and why I did not include them in my final project, in the hope that it will offer a bit of insight into my thinking and my process for recreating this historic necklace.

                      

All of the beads pictured are perfectly good beads. I did not make a major error in technique on any of these beads. In fact, I've realized that it is much rarer for me to actually "mess up" on a bead with a design that I am familiar than it was a year or two ago. The reason I did not include these beads in my necklace was because they were  not "exactly" what I wanted for this project. Because I have a higher level of technical skill than I did when completing my earlier necklace recreations ( and because all of the techniques and beads in this necklace were already familiar to me from past projects) I wanted to try to do something a little different to challenge myself with this project. When making this necklace I wanted to try to come "as close as I could"  to reproducing the beads based on the information found in the archeological report (size measurements, photographs, and drawings of each bead). For some beads I was able to come closer than others before I reach the point where I felt that to try any more would make me frustrated (its important to keep this fun!). 

I enjoyed this project because it let me challenge myself in different ways. It helped me learn to look at bit more closely at historic beads, and it let me me work to use my technical skills to try to make the glass do more exactly what I wanted it to do. I also liked the idea of trying to recreate the beads more accurately, because I think that subtle things, such as the thickness of a stringer design, and the placement of design elements closer or farther from each other, effects the overall feel of the bead. Hopefully my beads feel like a closer reproduction on this necklace than they have before.

A sampling of some of my thoughts and considerations as I recreated some of the beads for this project are below. If I were starting this necklace now, I would likely try blogging about each type of bead separately.

-When making the yellow and dark blue melon beads, I counted the number or ribs on the bead. I was able to do this for 2 of the 3 melon beads in this necklace because a top down view was given of the historic bead which enabled me to count the number of ribs. I then tried to make my bead not only the same size, but with the same number of ribs as the historic bead.

-When making the yellow melon bead, I was not happy with the transparent yellow glass rod I ordered. It was too light in color. So I mixed a very little bit of opaque yellow into the transparent yellow glass. This made the color darker, but still created a glass bead that was mostly transparent.


-When making the black and white wavy beads I noticed that some of the waves were thicker than others, so I tried playing with stringers of different thickness to see if I could get my beads to look closer to the historic beads. I also tried playing with how close or far away each wave was to the other waves. To the left are some of the beads I did not end up using, but you can use this picture to see how the thickness of the line varies between the beads, and how the space between the waves on the beads varies. This variation is particularly strong  when you compare the left most bead and the third bead from the left.

-When making the raked red and yellow and green and yellow beads I tried to count or infer the number of raked lines that were on the historic bead, and make my beads with a similar number of raked lines. I also tried to modify the thickness of my stringer and my placement of the stringer so I could place the same number of wraps around the bead as in the historic examples.

-When replicating the amber beads using amber colored glass I tried to make my beads the same size as the historic beads. Most of the beads were fairly uniform, so this was easy. However a few beads were much more irregular in their shape. At first I made these "irregular" bead much more "regular"  in shape. However, after talking with Clare/Isabel about the project, she made me realize that I really knew that I should try to reproduce them more accurately, even if it meant creating beads that were obviously uneven.

-Perhaps my most interesting revelation came when I was working on making the green and yellow zig-zag beads pictured to the right. I noticed that the archeological report described these beads have having a "wave design." However, after making a bead with a wave design (left most bead) I'm not sure that was the best or most accurate term to use. Zig-Zag seems to me to be a better and more accurate design term to use, so I modified my technique accordingly

Going further, when looking at the images of this type bead in the archeological report (image right), I noticed that the zig-zag design was not very crisp. There was a lot of glass contained in the tips of the zig-zag. After trying several times, I could not replicate this look very well. I could sort of get there, but it felt very awkward when trying. Having seen a period reconstruction of a bead with a similar design on You Tube, I think that part of the issue is  the modern torch and methods I am using. Thinking about this now, I might be able to try to more accurately recreate the construction method seen in the video if I use a softened ball of glass on the end of a rod to make my design instead of a modern thin piece of glass called a "stringer," and if I keep the flame very low. I will also be interested to try this design when I build my own period fire source!!!

***
Because these extra beads are perfectly good, many of the beads pictured above have already gone on to be used in other ways. They will not be wasted!! For example, I gave a small bag with some of these beads in it to be used in a gift basket. I also carry a small box of practice beads around with me when I do bead making demos, and sometimes I give a few of those beads away to people who stop by.