Recreated Portway Andover Necklace

A photograph of the finished necklace on display at Mudthaw!

 

Link to Photo of Historic Necklace

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!!!

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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.

Silver Crescent Medalion Glass Bead

The Silver Crescent bead was much more difficult for me to make than the Laurel or Maunch bead. The design, at least the one I found to be most successful, is not as straightforward and simple as the simple line drawing of the maunche or the raked dots that I used to make the laurel bead.

Below are some of the successful beads that I have made with this design. One will be mine, and two others will go to members of my households. As you can see, there is still some variability in their design, especially in the shape of the crown. However, I think i've gotten the basic trick of it. If I were to make a handful more, I think they would start to look a bit more alike with practice. Thanks go out to Carowyn for teaching me a method to make the crescent at the top. All of these were made using a bead pressed flat by a modern lentil shaped bead press.

First Attempt:

To make the crescent shape at the top I first tried something that Carowyn suggested, a "masked dot." This is a fun dot design that I had read about in modern glass bead making books. To make the masked dot I placed a white dot on the black background, and then I covered up half of the white dot with a black dot the same color as my background bead. This essentially "masks" part of the dot, forming a crescent shape. Looking back, I think I made the dot too large on my first attempt, which is why I assumed that this method would not work well, and why I went on to try a different way of making the crescent for a while. The huge crescent certainly did not leave me much room to play with the crown shape at the bottom!

To make the crown, I created a line of yellow using a thick stringer, and then I pulled the line up at three points. I did this by heating up just the line (keeping the base of the bead cool) and pulling on it with a piece of my stringer. If I keep the stringer cool, the cool stringer will pull the molten glass. This is a similar principle to what bead makers do to make raked dots. I did not have quite enough glass in the crown on this first attempt to rake the points up very far.

 Second Attempt:

For my second attempt, i tried placing a line of white glass and then dragging and pulling it into a a crescent shape. It sort of works here, so I decided to keep trying to see how much better I could make the crescent shape.

The crown on this attempt is better. A bit think, because I melted it into the base bead pretty far, but the shape is much better than my first try.

Other Attempts:

After trying to make the crescent by pulling the glass into shape several times, I figured out that this method is not going to work for me. It just doesn't look very good. 

The crown is working ok, and as I make more of these I realize that if I only melt the crown in a little bit, the shape stays crisper. The best example of this is the bead in the top of the left picture below. Over time I also started to add three dots on top of/but touching the yellow stringer line I make for the crown. I place these dots where I want the points of the crown will be. This gives me extra glass to use when I drag the points up to form the crown shape.

Final Attempts: 

Here, I went back to my initial idea of making the crescent using the "masked dots" technique. However, I created  a much smaller dot (top bead below) than I did at first. I  wass very happy with the results. I was even able to make the "masked dot" a bit bigger (bottom bead below) and still have enough room to form the crown on the bead.

I also decided here to add dots to the top of the crown (top bead below). I think this adds a little "something" to the shape of the crown.

Using this basic model I then made the three beads pictured at the start of this blot post. Overall, it took me about 10 attempts to figure out a method that worked for me!

Also, if you stumble upon this blog randomly, and want to know where you can purchase a silver crescent bead, another bead maker sells them here

Glass Laurel Medalions

A friend of mine recently got her Laurel, so I was inspired to try to make a laurel medallion bead for her. The one I gave her is the bead on the top.

The technique used is a basic bead decoration technique, but one that does require a good bit of practice to learn to do well/accurately. Basically, I placed two semi-circular rows of dots on each side of the bead and then raked down from the top center to the bottom center on each side. I placed the dots on a bead I had pressed flat with a lentil shaped bead press. When raking dots learning how close or far apart to place them is important. In general, the beads have to be closer together than you might think to achieve the desired effect.

It took me a few attempts to get it right. I'll try to find some of my other "draft" beads and go back and post pictures of those too. However, the one thing I realized after making the bottom bead, was that there should be fewer leaves on the inside of the laurel wreath than on the outside (taking a closer look at pictures online helped me figure this out!). You can see the bead on the top looks much less crowded. I placed a dot in the bottom middle of the top bead to make the area where each branch comes together look a  bit more neat, as it did not come out quite as evenly as it did in the bottom bead.

Update (4/16):  This is the only early attempt at the laurel bead that I could find. I think I discarded my earliest attempt or two at making these beads. The bead pictured below was made on the smallest size of my bead press, and the one issue I had with it was that there is not as much of a curve to the laurel leaves as is present in the beads above. To improve this bead I would have had to make the dots smaller I think, to allow for more of a curve in their placement.

Castle Bead

At K&Q's A&S someone asked if I would be able to make a castle bead for them, because we all need to have heraldic beads. I didn't know, so I tried!. Below is the bead I gave to the person who asked.

successful castle bead

In the interest of showing more of my process, below is my first draft attempt at making the castle bead. It looks mostly the same in overall shape, because the idea I had at the start seemed to work. Working off of the heraldry I was trying to imitate I made a cylinder bead, and then added glass onto the bottom and even more on to the top of the cylinder to make those parts stand out. I then squared the top with my parallel press because it seemed like it might look better and make the top stand out more (if i were to make a third bead I might try to make the whole beads square instead of just the top). Since I was not quite sure how to make the crenelations, I had to experiment with that a bit more. Could I indent the glass to make the crenelations, or would I have to add glass to make them. I hit on the idea of using large thick dots of glass, and I  put them at the corners (the bead was too small to make more crenelations than that). On my first attempt I was able to see that the idea would work, but needed to make a fresh bead because it was easier than trying to fix my draft after I figured out what I wanted to do.

castle bead, first try

Mudthaw Artisans Row & Peerage Token Project

Demonstrating for a new beadmaker

 So Mudthaw's Artisan Row happened!

Erica was lovely enough to stop by and ended up helping me quite a bit. She filled in when I was a bit late due to court, and when I needed to go get lunch. Demonstrating was a bit slow this time, due to overcrowding (i was in the very back), so i took some time to make tokens for Erica for her May-be event, and to teach/watch Erica make beads.

Erica wanted to learn how to make twisties, so I found myself teaching that skill for the first time. I took a few minutes before teaching her to make a few twisties myself so I could try to mentally break down the sequence of actions I use when making them, especially the timing of each action. She ended up doing a great job when she tried herself!  Teaching this skill has made me realize how much of the "timing" of this skill that I have internalized. To make a twistie you need to know how long to heat the glass, how long to wait after you pull it out of the fire before doing anything (waiting a little bit at this point is hugely important...if you don't wait, your twistie will end up too thin or uneven) and when to twist v.s. pull v.s wait a second for the glass to cool. I found myself talking to Erica as she was trying to make her first first twisty, guiding her through the timing, saying things like "wait," "twist," "pull," "twist faster," etc. Erica will need to practice to internalize this timing on her own, but hopefully going through this a few times with me will help her do that!

Erica Making a Bead

Mudthaw was also a very wonderful event because a good friend got her Laurel at the event. I was able to make tokens for her to give out to people who visited her during the day. It felt really wonderful to be able to participate in her ceremony in such a concrete way!

The design of the tokens was based on her heraldry. Because I was making 50 of them, I also tried to pick a design that would be easy to do! Seeing people wearing the tokens I made at the event was also cool!