You might be thinking ‘duh… well whatever it’s made of silly!’ — I challenge you to  think again!   Two recent events have got me thinking about this question:

I have just been fortunate enough to take a workshop with Holly Cooper — if you aren’t familiar with her glass beads you can see them here.

For the first time as a bead buyer I could not make up my mind which of Holly’s beads to purchase – they are all absolutely amazing.  Here is the one I finally settled on -

I’m leaving the pictures nice and big so that you can appreciate the details.

Holly Cooper bead

Holly Cooper bead

Holly’s stringer work is second to none – if you don’t know what stringer work is, imagine a thin strand of glass, not much thicker than a bristle in a hairbrush — Holly paints her designs onto her beads using these stringers.  It takes amazing creativity and control to achieve this.

Back the subject of this post — one thing Holly said particularly struck a chord in me – she was describing how her design goes around the bead and that it added another element to the bead.  That element was ‘time’, because the viewer had to turn the bead to follow the ‘story’ of the bead.

The second event that has led me to this post is that I discovered that some of my monkey bead designs have been copied by a Chinese bead making factory -

Chinese 'Bunkee' copy - notice the 'copyright' on their photo!!

I’m not alone in this, many beadmakers have had the same experience.  At first I was angry and frustrated, then I continued my ‘what’s in a bead’ train of thought.

Holly’s beads have taught me that there is so much more to a bead than glass (or any other material)  that has been shaped or embellished in some way.  Her comment about the element of time for me goes back to the birth of the bead, when I look at her bead I now see and appreciate the time that went into it’s creation.  When I hold it in my hand I am holding a few hours of that artist’s life, the thoughts that went through her mind as she made it, the concentration as the design was laid down and the song that came from her soul as the design was born – each of these elements completely and wonderfully unique to this particular bead.

Until now I had admired beads for their look, their colours and the way they spoke to me, but now I appreciate so much more.

What about the Chinese copies you may ask?  I don’t know the quality of the glass, if they’ve been annealed or even cleaned, but so much more is missing from them than that – they don’t have that special element — they’ve been mass produced, quickly and probably with little thought – - there really is nothing of an artist in them.  My only hope about them is that perhaps they may have helped put food on the table for a family who was hungry.

Next time you look at one of your favourite beads, take a minute to think about the artist and the little part of their life and soul that has been captured in that little treasure you hold in your hands.  I guarantee that bead will take on a whole new meaning!

Just for fun here’s a real closeup of the wonderful texture of my Holly Cooper bead – it is amazing – Holly can spend up to four hours creating one bead! Visit her website here.