The Magical Flame

A Life With Glass

   I spend my days designing, making and selling what most would call lampwork glass beads but what to me are the most stunning results of the magical flame that flickers before my eyes nearly every day, that blue cone of fire, my best friend and teacher.

   I'm guessing the difference between myself and most other beadmakers is the fact I work with the glass, I never use the glass. To me the glass can form more colours and designs than any one person could possibly dream of, it has the most amazing wild nature and if left to find it's own way it will produce some quite stunning effects.
   Yes in the early years of my involvement in the craft I would, like many others place dots and swirls on beads, I would label colours together that I thought were a great match and yes I would try to make my bead sizes all the same. But after a few years I came to realise I wasn't in charge at all, the glass and the flame were, I had been fighting them for so long yet all I had to do was learn from them, watch the way they worked in harmony and every morning that I opened my kiln I could wonder at the sensational results that I found.
   We all see some remarkable flower beads and dotted beads made every day and some are made with terrific skill and to those who love that kind of bead there is nothing better. With me I want a natural bead, if there is such a thing. I want a bead that is so very unique from every other, I want to know the flame meant this bead to be, it wasn't fighting against it but forming it's look, making each colour mix a marriage of nature, sometimes dark and mysterious other times bright and magical but every time it was how it wanted it to be.