COME BY TO SEE NEW WORK.
SHOULD BE GREAT WEATHER FOR ART-STUDIO-HOPPING.
ALL WEEKEND I’LL BE CELEBRATING MAKING MY 3000th NECKLACE, BRACELET OR EARRINGS. IT ONLY TOOK 24 YEARS. HA! BUT WHAT FUN ALONG THE WAY!
FRIDAY, AUG 16 FROM 6 TO 8 PM. wine and cheese to celebrate 3000.
SATURDAY & SUNDAY, AUG 17 & 18 from 10 TO 4.
CATALOGUES FOUND AT HULL BUSINESSES. ALWAYS FREE.
A touch of whimsy always makes my day.
This lampwork glass bird is one of many whimsical beads Stephanie Sersich, Topsham, Maine, creates. Sersich today is 43 years old and introduced herself to the bead world at age 25 with a public lecture and an article in the legendary “Lapidary Journal.” Two big influences contributing to her success are her creative Mom and a major in metalsmithing and painting. As she says, “I learned engineering and color which led me to making my own glass beads.”
She then developed her own “Spiny Knotting” method to allow her to bind many of her colorful beads into a single bracelet or necklace. Check them out on her website sssbeads.com.
I have often wondered why I preferred the hunt for fabulous beads like Stephanie’s instead of making them. It has a lot to do with the fact that my youthful focus was on getting an English degree, living in Paris and Lisbon, and being a corporate HR professional. I didn’t buy my first bead until I was 50 and living in Hong Kong, entertaining myself while my husband organized his company’s South Asian footprint. But I loved the hunt! From the Hong Kong Jade Market to Beijing’s outdoor flea markets, Shanghai’s treasure-filled antique shops, from small entrepreneurial silver shops in Bali, to the giant pieces of turquoise I found in Tibet, and the amazing beads on small Indonesian islands of Sumba, Komodo, and Flores. For two years, I never thought of making my own beads. Just acquiring them.
And I can safely say that is true today, 25 years later. I was determined, however, to put my own creative stamp on each necklace. To balance color and texture, to be bold, chunky and fearless, but above all to never stop searching for the odd, eccentric, remarkable bead. And to do that, I expanded my search to fulfill the true definition of a bead: something with a hole in it which can be strung.
Stephanie’s bird and fiber dangle is 3.5″ and the pink Czech glass bead necklace is 24″. Featured in the necklace are molded glass pre-war German semi-circle beads plus glass flowers at the end of the necklace and in the earrings. $139.
It’s good to be one. A lot of treats are coming my way. Plus hugs. Maybe Mom won’t think I am a puppy anymore. She always excuses my bad behavior by calling me a puppy.
Auntie Sandra sent me this gift from Napa Valley: a matching collar and leash from Mumm’s Champagne House. Auntie and Mom love to drink French Champagne when they are together!
I expect to have more fun like this now that I am growing up. I love to steal things Mom leaves within my reach and run around the house with them in my mouth, taunting Mom. Ball point pens and those mechanical pencils Mom has are my favorites! I have set a goal of one a week and I am very successful! This deliciousness was from destroying ablue gel pen…I have my eye on her green one.
I got her electric toothbrush recently. Catch that cocky look in my eyes? I’m good at this. One day I got her orange agenda from some silly place in Paris. She started crying so I felt I’d better drop it quickly. I hate that “Drop it” command. 
I like to watch the world go by from high places here in the backyard and in the car where I perch on the console. There are so many interesting critters on the ground, airplanes in the sky, and lots of water everywhere with those white birds.
By the end of the day, I am really tired. So I snooze while Mom watches TV and eats dinner. She always shares her bully stick with me. Yummy. I’m also happy when I go to my crate to sleep beside Mom’s bed. I get a good sleep so I can start the next day’s activities fresh!
He’s a gem, but I predict he’ll be a puppy for another year. I’m just grateful I survived the first year!
———-CORRECTION on April 1 Post. The lovely heart of lampwork glass that was the centerpiece of the “Nightingale’s Eye” necklace was attributed to the incorrect artist. They are buddies and share a booth at my most favorite bead show, Beadesigner, held in Watertown every October, but I want to correct it now. LORI HEIDEN-ENGLE is the fabulous artist!!!
Find out where she is selling her glass beads at http://www.heiden-engle.com
“Nightingale’s Eye”
The nightingale, a European thrush, is unknown to Americans other than through its history as a romantic, even poetic, bird with an amazing night song. (1)
Before I connect this necklace to my chosen title, let me tell you how I choose titles for my necklaces…and why I choose titles.
First, why title a necklace? I started making bead jewelry in 1993 while living in Hong Kong with nothing to do but wander while my husband was on an 18-month work assignment. While wandering, beads seemed to attach themselves to me. Since an acquisition gene controls a part of my life, I just collected beads. Soon I had to hide them under the bed. No surprise, my husband asked me why I had so many beads…Surprisingly, I answered, “To make necklaces!”
Oops. A commitment. Good reply, it turns out. I started at the dining room table in Hong Kong and liked what I did. I had fabulous beads. Still do. So I made some decisions: this is my business; it’s appropriate to make a profit so I can keep buying beads without guilt; I’m now an artist; therefore I treat my work like a painting (Important insight. I had plexiglass boxes made so I can hang my works like two-dimensional art.) Also, I titled my work. Whew, took two paragraphs to answer that one.
How I choose titles. When we returned to Menlo Park from Hong Kong, while reading the NYTimes Book Review, I started underlining catchy phrases. Mind you, only an English major wants to memorialize catchy phrases. Then I listed them on notepaper. I did this for less than a year. I just went to my studio to count the pages–23. I still use them and have never expanded the lists.
When I finish a necklace, I prepare a tag. First is the title. The feeling of the necklace is fresh in my mind as I review the lists and a title that corresponds jumps at me. It’s totally intuitive. So simple.
Back to the nightingale and the necklace. I recently named this necklace and when I started writing today, discovered how an intuitive pick from my long list of titles was the correct karmic choice.
There is a Ukraine legend that a nightingale flew to Ukraine from India and heard only sad songs, so it sang its song to cheer them up. The people responded with happy songs, and since then, nightingales visit Ukraine each spring to hear happy folk songs. This was my spring necklace, created in the winter, correctly, if surprisingly, so named for spring. Full circle.
Details: it is 20.5” long accompanied by earrings that are 1.5” long. $119 the set. The necklace features a lampwork glass heart by Louise Erskine (MA) and two large Venetian blown glass beads. The remaining beads are rock crystal and faceted glass crystals. I love how the aqua of the crystals refracts through the clear beads. Sterling silver clasp.
To hear a nightingale sing, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TepTnlERuRo
Max will turn one year on April 12. I shall post a birthday salute!
“Dreams Die Hard”
I wanted this month’s featured necklace to have a short story because I have a longer story I am eager to share.
“Meet Max,wearing a necklace of abalone shell and pearls made in California by Elaine”
Max is the feature this month: a Labradoodle born on April 12, 2018 and welcomed into my home on June 19. Yellow Lab Maxie passed away on February 3 and it didn’t take me long to realize I missed my canine companion and I hated the quiet house! To fix it, I did a lot of research and found an experienced certified breeder: Marianne Hannagan at Autumn Haze Labradoodles in Newmarket, NH.
The result is an 11-lb cream-colored mellow male puppy who should be 30 lbs at maturity. He is quite delightful even though he exhausted me the first week! Week two is an improvement as we adapt to each other. We have started Obedience Training.
He now sleeps in his crate, assembledlast week by my brother-in-law, and already loves it! He walks into it often. Amazing.
He is full of puppy energy. I think he turns on a go button and runs for60 minutes, then switches the off button and sleeps for more than an hour. Since I’m getting up at 6am, I try to outsmart him by taking him to the garden where I cut, deadhead and weed while he runs up, down and around. Then at 7, it’s food, coffee and the newspaper while he cools down and sleeps. For the rest of the day, it is all about Max outsmarting me as I follow him around, removing low-hanging stuff, re-arranging electrical cords and putting my belongings up high.
Max was in the studio with me as I made this month’s necklace.
It is sweet and quiet, even though it looks so shiny in the photo. It is made with faux pearls which have no background story, in a pleasant pale yellow. The lampwork glass heart is made by Louise Erskine (MA) and is pale yellow at its center surrounded by several shades of soft green.
This necklace is 19” long; the centerpiece is 1.5″ long; the clasp is brass; matching earrings with vermeil earwires are included. $79.
Why bother with unique clasps? Answers: it’s all about the hunt; it’s a challenge to put something creative at the back of the neck; it makes me stretch.
Anyone can use store-bought clasps or even seek out artist-make clasps at the big bead shows. I too use these old stand-bys for the majority of my necklaces. But it is fun to rummage through my drawers and cubbies to see what odd find can be made into a clasp.
I made a decision early on that I didn’t want to create beads. It suited my personality to engage in a hunt for the odd, quirky, overlooked, repurposable, full-of-character item that can function as one part of a clasp—either the circle or the stationary part or the toggle or moving part of the clasp. Yes, I am a collector. My finds are my treasures.
This particular clasp find is a 1960’s vintage plastic circle that was a good color match to the necklace. Plus, it added texture to the already-rich necklace: look closely at the crisscross pattern.
I designed the toggle part of the clasp from sterling silver wire.
The centerpiece is thick handmade glass I purchased in Murano, Italy, with a distinctly aqueous pattern in bold tones of aqua and pale grey with some darker streaks. It is 2” diameter.
In a stroke of great bead karma, Drawer 15 (Grey) contained the palest shade of grey faceted Czech glass beads which are the base of the necklace and speak to the centerpiece. Also note the four artist-made lampwork glass beads bookended with rare vintage Italian oval glass beads in aqua.
Statistics for this necklace follow:
Title: “Murano Waves”
Length: 21” plus centerpiece.
Featured beads are described above. Matching earrings with 7/8” dangle are included.
Price: $110.
I made a trip to Murano & Venice in 2013 and blogged about it here on June 29, 2013.
My Blog Plan for 2018 is based on a first of the month posting of a special necklace and its story which was also 2017’s plan, only weekly. I also thought I might post a more lighthearted piece of work mid-month.
There is nothing more lighthearted than ball chain. My first exposure to it was a lucky rabbit’s foot I received as a birthday present as a kid. Today such a gift would have PETA picketing outside our family home. I just attached it to my pencil bag and petted it for good luck.
Otherwise folks used it to keep their keys together. Maybe it should have been called key chain? Or dogtag chains? Or pull cord chain?
My selections from the top include fancy sterling silver ball chain with the Egyptian Ankh and Nefertiti pendants.
Then three brass ball chain 24-6” long, with picture jasper, brass and copper, and ceramic snake pendants.
Next, 36″long ball chain with faux Amber resin and lamp-work glass with silver dots.
Finally, ordinary ball chain with picture jasper, lampwork glass and pewter in 24-6″.
Ball chain really keeps prices down! They range from $11 to $25.
The top two sterling silver are $35 and $38, left to right.
“Empress of the Splendid Season”
My Chinese Apothecary Chest: in 1994, it arrived via container to California from Hong Kong, where I discovered beading during my husband’s ex-pat assignment. Serves as the repository for my beads. Handcrafted. It has 52 Drawers, mostly sorted by color.
2017 Challenge: Create a Necklace a Week, using only the Beads from one Drawer at a time. Voila! 52 Necklaces!
Week 37/Drawer 37: September 13, 2017: “Empress of the Splendid Season”
I never knew there were so many shades of olive until I looked into the so-named drawer #37. That said, the color of this necklace defies definition, even if the beads were living in my olive drawer! It is a dusky green with gray tones…
I was pleased to see I had a good amount of American Art Glass which I paired with not one, but two, pieces of Lampwork Glass by Gail Crosman Moore. I balances Gail’s lush work with a common round agate. A few inches of small faceted Labradorite provided subtle color support to the dusky art glass and brought the necklace to 19” in length.
The Art Glass is by David Christensen who used to commute from Rhode Island to California to sell his beautiful wares to folks like me. See Drawer 17 in my blog dated 5-3-17 for the Art Glass history. These beads have the color embedded in the center—there are actually two shades of the color that my photographic inexperience may not allow you to see—and the clear glass surrounding each bead is cut in a diamond shape.
Gail’s beads have been featured several times this year; they never fail to mesmerize due to the complexity of their layered colors and their unique shapes.
I chose the spacer/extender Labradorite beads to compliment Gail’s and David’s colors. Labradorite is a semi-precious stone that is usually gray-green in color; its attraction is the iridescence that seems to move depending on the angle it is viewed from. I like how an Intuit lore describes Labradorite: it fell from the frozen fire of the Aurora Borealis.
This necklace is very tactile due to diverse shapes and a color that calls you in for a closer look and touch.
At 19”, with earrings included, it is priced at $189.
I first introduced a Gail Crosman Moore bead to this blog in 4-11-2016. Others followed in 4-12-17 as well as 5-3-17 and 5-10-17. To access these blogs, choose the month and year in the ARCHIVES box on the right side panel of the landing page of priscillabeadle.com.
In a final postscript, my friend Sue, a lover of Labradorite, created a kitchen island top out of this magnificent stone!!!
“Something of an Asterick”
Just like last week, I am focusing on the centerpiece while I am in the blue drawer. Only this time the centerpiece has a lot of orange, so, dear readers, I must cheat. I must take the orange drops from Drawer 19 to make a great necklace. Orange and blue are at opposite ends of the color wheel which makes them very compatible…not always true in our human relationships.
My compliments to fellow New Englander Stephanie Sersich (Topsham, Maine) for her wonderful Lampwork starfish. I met Stephanie at one of those gigantic bead shows in Oakland, CA, and found her here three years ago in the small but fabulous show the Bead Society holds each October in Watertown, MA. Her starfish was alluring to me on all counts: slightly irregular shape; polka dots, so many layers of scintillating colors!!!
This is an asymmetrical necklace. They are a lot of fun to make and a challenge to balance. I often choose to go asymmetrical when I have a few stunning beads I want to highlight. In this piece, there were an excess of fabulous blue beads, none totaling more than a half-dozen. So I gave it a whirl.
Here is a description of those beads, starting from the clasp: flat rectangular vintage medium blue; two American Art Glass with lampwork glass in between. Then the most challenging section to balance: two odd-shapes with a large Art Glass in between across from one odd-shape balanced with periwinkle ceramic beads. The polka dot lampwork beads were irresistible! The only beads I had volumes of were the orange Czech glass drops, so they became the glue as well as the “pop” that holds the necklace together.
Only you, the viewer, knows if all this asymmetry worked.
The necklace is 18” and the starfish dangles 2”. The clasp is an orange glass circle with a silver toggle. Matching earrings of American Art Glass and orange drops. The set is $145.
See Week 17 for details on American Art Glass.
Note to Leticia S: your necklace is on the way!!!
“Don’t Let Your World Get Small”
My Chinese Apothecary Chest: in 1994, it arrived via container to California from Hong Kong, where I discovered beading during an ex-pat assignment. Serves as the repository for my beads. Handcrafted. It has 52 Drawers, mostly sorted by color.
2017 Challenge: Create a Necklace a Week, using only the Beads from one Drawer at a time. Voila! 52 Necklaces!
Week 30/Drawer 30: July 26, 2017: “Don’t Let Your World Get Small”
This necklace focuses on the centerpiece; it is an artist-made glass petal wrapped over itself, leaving a ruffled opening for the necklace designer to embellish. I will confess I bought 6 of these in different colors from the husband and wife designers and I have no record of their names. My apologies since I pride myself on acknowledging artists I use in my work. I further confess I have made them all in the same style; namely, with multi strands of seed beads flowing from the center.
There should be an equal focus on the rare Bohemia beads I used in the necklace. I wanted to keep their purple color flowing in the centerpiece and was able to bring in green with a tube of seed beads that are green outside and purple inside! The glass drops are also Bohemia beads.
“Details of the centerpiece with seed bead embellishment. Also notice clarity of large Bohemia beads in the necklace.”
In 1995-9, there was a trader called Ava who held semi-annual trunk shows at my favorite bead shop in Palo Alto. She sold exclusively what she called “pre-war pressed glass beads from Bohemia”. They were exquisite and expensive and I was smart enough to buy from her every time she visited.
Bohemia is actually the precursor of the Czech Republic and touched Austria, Hungary, Germany, and Poland. Glass beads were made there from the 12th century but not until a trade show in Prague in 1829 were they commercially introduced. By 1850, the Germans had invented costume jewelry and Austria became the premier producer of the finest glass crystals in the world…think Swarovski. Pressed glass (which means molten glass poured into a mold) boomed until the run-up to WWII in the 1930’s and then ceased during the war years.
In postwar 1946, the German glassworkers in Bohemia were given 48 hours to leave. They were able to take precious little; the Czechs moved in to their homes and factories. But the Germans soon coalesced in Neu Gablonz in a bombed out ammunitions factory. They still make pressed glass but not of the pre-war quality they made in Bohemia.
Now take another look at the 12 large round purple beads in the necklace and the five drops in the centerpiece strands: they are pre-war pressed glass beads. Made in a mold, but no mold marks. They are as translucent as any finely cut gemstone. Dark purple large faceted glass discs and small light purple faceted discs finish the 18” necklace. The centerpiece is 4.5” long and 2” at its widest. Gold metal magnet clasp. Earrings to match. $159 for the set.
