Friday, February 05, 2010

The Ancients

I am fascinated with ancient Roman glass.

With a little fussing, and few unsuccessful tries, I worked up with a small set of beads that remind me of ancient glass.
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They were etched, which gave them a velvety, time-worn look.

Here's how they looked before I etched them. I purposefully did not clean my glass rods before starting so that the beads would have lots of little scummy bubbles.
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They have an inner barrel shaped core of Cim's Kryptonite. On top of that I added a rough cut shard of gold dichroic glass. Finally I encased them in freeform blobs and wraps of pale transparent colors - Aqua, Pink and Apple along with a lot of some particularly nasty scummy Vetrofond clear that I got stuck with.

The idea for these beads started with a desire to somehow use up this extra crappy clear. Waste not, want not. I knew the only way to use it would be etch any beads made out of it - to hide all its inclusions, scummy little bubbles and imperfections.
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The encased bits of dichroic glass makes them seem to glow, and shimmer, from within.

The holes are oversized. I wound the beads on 1/8" mandrels so they could be strung on a leather.
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They are available in my Belvedere etsy shop.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Really do have an ancient look to them!