Beadlust

Glorious, Glorious
Green Glass Beads!

From the start of my beady career, I've always loved green glass beads. This is a necklace I made in 1990, featuring green and copper colored beads.

And here is a detail of the hand I fabricated with copper and sterling, stamping my motto of the day, "Bead Lust - Critical Mass" on the fingers and thumb. Ever since then, beadlust is my constant companion... hence the name of this blog.

Have you ever noticed in the bead shops that there are more color variations among the green glass beads than any other color? Once this was even more pronounced than it is today.

A Sad Story about Green Glass

In the 1990's, when I used to travel to the Czech Republic to buy beads, I met a man whose family had been in the glass making business for several generations. During the 1940's his family's busniness was closed by the government because they weren't "politically correct" (ie. Communist-friendly).

He told me that prior to WWII, there were several small family businesses making glass in Bohemia (in what is now southwestern Czech Republic, an area renouned for production of glasswear). These small businesses were highly competitive, each striving to develop more interesting color variations. The chemicals and colorants used in making green glass were available and comparatively inexpensive. By slightly altering the formula, say by adding a small amount of piss from the family donkey, one could produce a new variation of green. But if the donkey died or the formula was lost, that specific color could no longer be produced.

He showed me a sample book of glass that was the pride and joy of his family. His parents had managed to hide it when their business was taken over. I was totally blown away by pages and pages and pages of glass samples (in the form of pressed glass buttons), each page with 54 samples, every one a slightly different color. And, oh my goodness, the greens! Pages of them - maybe 120 hues in all! Below is a picture, taken with my film camera with flash, of one of the pages in his sample book; this one shows only the transparent colors of green glass available at the time.


But when all the small businesses were consolodated into a single factory, there was no more competition and no need to produce so many different colors. Also, most of the color formulas were destroyed or kept secret by the originators. As you can see below, the modern sample card from the single remaining glass factory shows only 10 variations of transparent green.


In the pictures below, you can get an idea of the range of green seed beads available between the late 1800's and WWII.

Modern Green Glass Beads

For a while after WWII, the production of colored glass for making household glassware and beads was dismal indeed. There was one glass-making factory in Germany and one in the Czech Republic. Demand was relatively low at the time, and neither factory attempted to develop their range of colors.

The sample cards for the seed bead manufacturing plant in the Czech Republic were changed to show only a basic range of colors. Gone was the extensive range of colors that we notice when we look closely at a Victorian beaded bag such as the one below (or see this book).

But then the Japanese started producing seed beads. As the demand from the American bead renaissance (late 1980's) picked up, the Japanese began developing more colors and more finishes, with more variations on the market all the time. The Czech pressed glass bead and seed bead manufacturers were aware of this, and soon began to request more colors from the European glass makers in order to be competitive with the Japanese.

We're still not close to the variety of glass colors available before WWII, but at least today German and Czech glass manufacturers are trying to replicate some of the colors of the past. Also some stashes of old glass, hidden away when family business were shut down, have been found and used, especially to make pressed glass beads (shapes such as leaves, flowers, lentils, etc.) with new molds replicating old bead molds.

The sory of producing glass rods used for lampworking (winding glass beads on a mandrel in the flame of a torch) is similar. When making lampworked beads first began in the USA (around 1985), the only available glass was made by Moretti in Italy. Again, the Japanese developed a competitive line (Satake), and finally small European (for example, Lauscha in Germany) and American businesses began to produce glass rods for lampworking. If you'd like to know more about lampworking, here is an article about the history of this art.

My Personal Lust for Green Glass Beads

Before green glass beads, I had a marginal appreciation for green, definitley NOT as a color to wear, but a color of spring and lushness of nature. But the day I saw and fingered all the lovely sample buttons of green glass mentioned above, the color green and I found a new relationship! I gravitated toward green beads in the shops, checking to see if I could identify old hues among the vintage beads, looking for new variations in the Japanese seed beads, buying green lampwork beads. I still don't wear much green, but my green bead stash exceeds even the limits of a beadlust gal.

Now I notice green everywhere I go - the spines of books in the library, bolts of fabric and skeins of yarn, candles and marbles, cat collars, rubber stamp inks, roofing materials and... well, you get the idea. In the spring, I admire every variation of green moss on our property, as you can see in my improvisational bead embroidery piece entitled "Moss and Wildflowers".

Recently I picked up a small branch with various types of lichen growing on it (posted here), and admired the subtle variations in color, from pale grey-green to vibrant lime green. Apparently, I'm not alone. One of my favorite lampwork beadmakers, Terri Budrow-Nelson, saw my lichen pictures and used them as inspiration for this set of beads recently listed in one of her eBay auctions.

Overheard On A Saltmarsh ~ a poem on the subject of green glass beads, written in 1913 by Harold Monro (1879-1932).

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

Green glass, goblin. Why do you stare at them?

Give them me.

No.

Then I will howl all night in the reeds
Lie in the mud and howl for them.

Goblin, why do you love them so?

They are better than stars on water
Better than voices of winds that sing
Better than any man's fair daughter,
Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

Give me your beads; I desire them.

No.

I will howl in a deep lagoon for your green glass beads,
I love them so. Give them me. Give them me.

No.

Overheard on the Saltmarsh in Beads

And here you have Monro's poem again, this time represented in beads. This fascinating necklace is a collaboration piece between jeweler/bead artist Carol Berry and lampworker Brian Kerkvliet. Isn't this a necklace to seriously lie in the mud and howl over?




Please let me know...
I'm concerned about the length of this post. It's taken me hours and hours to prepare. Please give me your honest opinion... Is it too long? Should I have done one section of it per day over a period of time, or do you prefer to view it all at once, as in this post?