torch question

And even that example shows how much less women were respected, as no one mentions Jane Morris and the other women who worked on the tapestries.

-Su

You are competely right, of course. It's not universally so; here in the NW, blowing glass is usually considered an art, and fused pieces... purely by virtue of size... are usually also lumped into the "art" category. This is largely by virtue of the several schools and high-profile glassblowers we have here... Dale Chihuly kind of springs to mind. :)

Even here, though, lampwork beads are rarely, if ever, considered art. Lampwork also, I hate to say, carries a stigma because of the pipemakers. I respect pipe-making as a craft and sometimes as an art, but the popular view exists of pipemakers, and hence lampworkers, as a bunch of pothead hippies and slackers. As lampworked beads become more popular, the view is changing... to one of bored middle-aged housewives with too much spare money and time. Not images of "serious artists" either way. Of course, both perceptions are true to a degree, but they exclude the vast majority of pipemakers and beadmakers.

I think that over time, handmade beads as art will be accepted in much the same way that loomed rugs and blankets have been accepted as art.

-Kalera

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

]There is even one piece with an inscription that says ]something to the effect of "this pot was made by me and so-and-so down the ]street could never do anything this good".

now THAT is funny!

vj found this in rec.crafts.beads, from "Louis Cage" :

] Good job.

thank you, sir [curtsying]

] Remember, bead jewelry is as a whole has been considered "junk" or ]"costume" jewelry when compared to items made only of gems and precious ]metals.

yes, i run into that periodically. otoh, i HAVE already convinced Oran otherwise, especially since he's seen a good part of my 'stash' of lampwork . . . and HE's in the process of re-educating some of his own customers. the first thing he said was "this has changed a LOT since the last time i looked at it!" i suspect it hasn't changed all that much - just that i've found better quality glass than he had seen before [thank you, ladies!]

]Metal and gem jewelry are like wearing gold bars or sacks of ]diamonds. It is a display of the wealth required to even possess the raw ]materials needed to make the jewelry. So since you are wanting to show you ]can wear a year's worth of money on your neck, why not make it pretty? So ]it will take a little education to make most people realize the fine ]lampworked beads are worth as much, if not more than, the chain they are ]strung on.

as i said - i'm working on it as fast as i can. some people are more open to the idea than others. **sigh**

Interesting - thanks for replying. I hope things change eventually. Lots of good info.

Oh, I completely agree. And I love a lot of the pipes I have seen - Pan comes to mind. Beautiful pieces of art.

At AGI the first few days we were apparently referred to as "the bead ladies" (and not necessarily in a good way) by some of the pipe boys. By the end of the week I think we managed to change the view a little :)

"one-upsmanship"

Heheheheheh... Gee Kathy, whatever do you suppose changed their minds? ROFLMAO!!!! I'll never tell.

Tink Check here for available work:

I'm sure it was our astounding ability to make magnificent beads. :)

Um.... Yeah. That's it! NOT

Tink Check here for available work:

Ugh, I hope you did! Pipemakers have their own culture, that's for sure. Some of that has carried over into boro beadmaking, too; a lot of them are ex-pipemakers, and there can be a bit of an attitude toward soft glass beadmakers.

Speaking of which, I ran into the most interesting perception of boro. I was at a gallery where they do classes, and someone asked the owner if they do an intro to boro class. He replied, "no, we only have beginner classes". Puzzled, the querent said, "oh, no, I just mean a starter class using boro" and the owner replied, "Like I said, we just have beginner classes right now".

The girl who teaches their beginner class is a boro beadmaker, so they have the knowledge as well as the glass and the equipment... they simply consider boro to be an automatic intermediate! I was stymied... there's no reason to learn soft glass first if you want to do boro. I just thought that was an interesting perception, that somehow you couldn't have a boro class for beginners.

-Kalera

I understand the viewpoint. There are many more issues to deal with in boro than in soft glass. In Moretti, there all only a few colors that strike under varying conditions while in boro there are only a few colors that don't. I have taught classes for about five years and I am willing to bet that there are less than 10% of the people who even bothered to get the equipment needed to make beads. Most beginner classes are populated by folks who never intend to continue with the craft even when they signed up for the class. I have seen that in nearly every type of workshop regardless of the medium. For example, my wife takes workshops just for relaxation, never really intending to make any more pieces that she takes home from the classes. So the economics of workshops are similar to the economics of health clubs, you have to have more people sign up than would ever actually do it on a regular basis. So since it is cheaper to teach a beginning soft glass class than a boro one, I can see why they would save boro for the ones who have proven to be in it for the long haul. That does not mean that you can't start from scratch and learn boro without learning soft glass.

To be completely honest, I wouldn't suggest learning soft glass first if what someone is interested in is boro. It's like raising dogs in order to prepare yourself to raise horses; more or less similar but a waste of time for you and the dogs.

I'm not sure it really matters to the studio whether the students ever buy the equipment and set up at home; if they pay for the class, they've learned what they wanted to learn, and the studio has made their money.

In this case, the studio isn't "saving" boro for anyone; they simply don't offer a boro class at all, which is their prerogative, but I found the explanation mildly baffling. Boro beads aren't harder, (OK well it IS harder, but not more difficult!) they're just different. Being taught you have to learn soft glass in order to learn boro seems like a cruel trick to me; you go through all this effort to develop an intuition for the glass, and then you change to a glass that behaves completely differently.

-Kalera

I totally agree Kalera. The differences in the glasses are like night and day. I would never suggest that a person need to take a soft glass class before they move to boro. If they want boro then they should be able to find a class somewhere, right?

I am pretty sure that you could unearth a beginner's boro class somewhere in this town; we have GA and NS here, (GA just a few blocks from my old house... who knew?) and I bet if I called them they would have class recommendations. Unfortunately, I think most beginners wouldn't think to do that; they would call bead stores, glass shops, and galleries.

-Kalera

I think you missed my point. First off, the person giving the classes obviously doesn't teach boro, so it is moot. Personally, I use boro more than Moretti now, and though I have some teaching experience, I do not feel qualified to teach boro. Whether I can duplicate a given technique or not I can explain how just about any bead is made, if it is soft glass. I can't always do that with boro. Secondly, in my experience, most people taking a beginner class are unaware that there are different types of glasses, and as I said before are not going to go any further with it anyway. It's not that the teacher should care whether they go further with it or not, but running a boro class is more expensive. The glass costs more, the fuel costs are higher, etc. So either the class would cost more (which would deter students) or the studio would make less (which deters the studio). Then you would have the notion of having two beginning classes, one for boro and one for soft glass, which would only confuse the majority of neophytes. Also since boro works slower than soft glass, you can't cover as many basic techniques in a given space of time as you can with soft glass. While there are differences, glass is glass. Dots and lines are dots and lines and so forth. But boro presents additional things to worry about that soft glass doesn't. Knowledge of flame chemistry and multiple annealing temperatures and times for striking are not necessary in soft glass classes, but are important in boro. After having some experience watching people freak out over rotating a mandrel, I can see why a teacher would want to keep the info in a beginning class to a minimum. As far as a "cruel joke" because of "getting an intuition for the glass", that is highly unlikely to happen in a weekend or one week workshop anyway. At least for most people. Finally, having said all that, all I meant was I understood the studio's viewpoint, and tried to give reasons why. If a person is savvy enough about different types of glass to want to learn boro first or exclusively, there is no reason not to do so. Obviously, it would be to their advantage. After all pipemakers do it all the time. And if you found a place that taught boro at all, and you had enough people to commit to a class (whatever their minimum is), I'm sure you would, and should, be accommodated.

The person teaching the classes there does teach boro, but not at the studio in question. I'm not arguing their reasons to not teach boro, I was actually only surprised with their presentation of that reason, and their assumption that boro is automatically an intermediate class. If they'd phrased their response at all differently, I wouldn't have even noticed, let alone commented on it. Just for perspective, too, they were addressing an ISGB member at an ISGB meeting... so they didn't need to dumb it down.

There seem to be a lot of glass neophytes around here who do know the difference between boro and soft glass, enough so to know they're interested more in one than the other. As for getting an intuition for the glass, learning soft glass first does not imply, to me, taking one class, it implies actually taking the time to learn the glass before taking a hard glass class.

There are a lot of people in my area who learned to work boro first, and in fact the girl who teaches the class at the gallery I'm talking about is a boro beadmaker who learned boro first and doesn't really work in soft glass other than teaching that one class, which I think is an interesting twist. She's perfectly competent to teach it, but I did think that was mildy ironic.

-Kalera

It is my observation (as a non bead maker) that the longer you work a bead, the muddier it becomes. And boro is so often muddy even with experienced people, I would think it would be terribly hard to get something "pretty" (non-ugly) if you're learning new techniques with glass that is slower from the get go. Wouldn't it help on the time/clarity problem to learn some basic techniques with softer glass first? (Question, not declaration)

I have just decided, that I'm going to severely limit my boro purchases, after again buying beads that are gorgeous and exciting in the photo, but drab here at home, even under the Ott light. Made into a piece of jewelry and worn, they are even less likely to get enough light to be similar to what was pictured.

Tina

I wasn't really speaking so much to this specific person as a general view. Although in the OP, his reply was "no, we only have beginner classes". And I didn't know the context, kind of surprising considering where he said it. As far as really learning the soft glass before moving to boro, I agree that is obviously unnecessary and could be counterproductive if a person knew they really wanted to work boro on the front end.