Lark Books "Masters: Glass Beads"

The book “Masters: Glass Beads” has finally been released and I must admit that I am very pleased with how it came out. It is the loveliest book about contemporary glass beadmakers and their beads I have ever seen. It is delicious eye candy and an excellent publication for anyone who likes beads.

A great side benefit of the publication of this book is that all the beadmakers who are in the book were invited to be involved in a bead show in Kobe, Japan at the Lampworked Glass Museum located there.

I jumped at the opportunity to be in the show in Japan because they want some of my beads for their permanent collection and they are willing to sell my beads for me at the show. This is a win-win situation because I have been involved with this museum before and had a positive experience with them.

I have my new website up now at http://www.patriciafrantzstudios.com, that I totally developed myself by learning Dreamweaver and Photoshop software programs. The website will always be a work in progress as I develop new pages and add more in-depth information.

About Glass Beads

I thought I would talk about a medium I have been working in for twenty years which is lampworked glass beads. I am in a new book published by Lark Books called “Masters: Glass Beads” that has bios and photos of 40 bead makers, and their beads, who have a long history of making fine lampworked glass beads. This publication will be out in May and can be pre-ordered through Amazon.com.

I have had a 20 year obsession with glass bead lampworking and consider it time well spent. For those who do not know, making glass beads in a torch is both hypnotic and addictive. It is such an absorbing process that it makes everything outside of the glass in the flame go away. It is so absorbing that I have to have a clock right in front of me when I work, so that I do not work for too many hours in a row.

Making glass beads came about organically for me after a friend of mine brought some Italian glass rods to me over 25 years ago. I couldn’t find anyone who could or would teach me to make beads, so I figured it out on my own by looking at photos of very old Italian glass beads.

As time went on, I got really heavy into a crystal coated glass called dichroic, which is very bright and sparkles a lot. Dichroic glass is a really weird thing to work with because your are dealing with bent light like with the rainbow produced by a prism and not a pigment. I have included a photo of a group of dichroic beads that I really like because the colors turned out so rich that I almost want to eat them.