“She’s CHEATING ME!” the woman from Rhode Island screamed into the phone. She could hardly catch her breath, the anger overtaking her ability to explain why she was calling.
“I read your article about Pricing and Selling on-line, and I’m not getting my $70.00 for my piece.”
She didn’t have to say anymore. I knew right off the bat she was talking about CONSIGNMENT. I recognize the anger. The frustration. The feeling that someone put something over on you, and you’re powerless to correct the situation. You don’t know what to do. You know the sweat, time and cost you put into all the pieces you let some stranger have, and now what do you do?
“I put 10 of my pieces of jewelry in her shop in Northern Rhode Island — not a big shop, no sales, except, this one piece sold, not in a major place,” she continued, taking breath after breath, to get it all out, in some way that made sense, and some way that kept her from losing it.
“What do I Do?”
“She sold my piece for $70.00, and didn’t give me my money?”
“Should she have given me my money right away?”
“Should I take my jewelry out of her shop?”
“Should I never do consignment again?”
She peppered me with questions, not waiting for an answer.
She indicated that the store owner told her that she paid her artists 30 days after a sale. Her customers had 30 days to return something. If the store owner paid before that time, she would be out the money. Store owners can set whatever policies they want, and in this case, I told the woman it was reasonable to wait 30 days, given the policy.
Of course, it had already been 7 weeks.
“Should she call her?” Her husband told her not to call yet. He didn’t want her to make waves, or ruin this opportunity to sell her jewelry.
“Call her,” I said. If the store owner said 30 days, then 30 days it should be.
Consignment may be a necessary evil, especially when you are getting started in the jewelry making business. But consignment is not the best situation to be in. Most stores that accept consignment do not understand the consignment business. As a result, when the time comes to pay the artists, there’s no cash flow.
In Consignment, the store is at greater risk than the artist. The store has to make space available for the pieces, and forgo the opportunity to get something else in that retail-real-estate that might do better. The store has to display the pieces, and keep them clean and presentable. The store has to train its sales staff so that they have sufficient information and motivation to make the sale. And, of course, there’s the tracking and accounting that goes with every consignment piece on sale.
Your best clue to whether a particular consignment situation is a good or better one, is the percentage split between the store or gallery owner and the artist. Given the level of risk each party assumes, the optimum distribution is 60/40 with the store or gallery getting the larger amount. But if the split is 40/60 or 50/50, this would be a acceptable sign as well.
However, when the split is 70/30 or 30/70 or outside this 60 and 40 range, yellow flags should go up. This shows that the store or gallery owner is not aware of the level of risk in their business. You probably won’t get paid on time, and not get paid without a lot of time spent yelling on the phone. Your pieces won’t be maintained. They won’t be displayed in a prominent place. No one will be trained or motivated to sell your pieces.
Just because you confront a potentially bad consignment situation doesn’t necessarily mean that you should walk away, however. There are a few prominent boutiques in Nashville that offer a 70/30 split between the store and the artist. They rarely pay their artists when the pieces sell. It takes a lot of screaming, “Bloody Murder!” before you get paid. But these are very prominent shops. Letting other stores and galleries know that you have pieces in these shops will open many doors for you. You might view the delayed payments and the effort to get your money as “marketing expenses.”
Other reasons you might settle for a bad situation: — You’re just getting started, and saying your pieces are in a shop anywhere has some marketing cache that goes with this — You can direct customers to this shop. At least you have a place to send people to view and purchase your work. You might not have a central base from which to work. Your main business might be doing craft shows, and here you can direct people to your jewelry between shows. — This might be the only game in town.
But otherwise, if consignment doesn’t have some added value for you, you want to minimize your consignment exposure.
When you negotiate consignment terms with a shop, try to:
1) Get a feel for the amount of consignment they do (and how long they have been doing this), the range of artists, the range of types of merchandise on consignment, and the types of customers they have
2) Get a 60/40, 50/50 or 40/60 split
3) Work with store or gallery owner on final retail pricing of your pieces.
4) Get a written contract
5) Get in writing if possible, but an oral agreement would suffice, to convert the situation to “wholesale terms”, if you pieces sell well. (Be sure to define what “selling well” might mean. Example: sell 10 pieces within next 6 months.)
6) Determine a specific date when to take your pieces out, or trade them out for new pieces. Usually it’s good to trade them out every 3–6 months.
7) Determine exactly how and when you will get paid, after any one piece sells. A 30-day waiting period is reasonable.
As to my friend in Rhode Island, I suggested she take her pieces out of this shop. She was expecting to get paid 30% after 30 days. It’s years later. She was never paid.
Making jewelry is such a happy endeavor. But is the designer always happy? Always ready to lay out all the parts, and get to it? Forever on top of the game? You are the jewelry designer. Alone, at first, with your thoughts. Your inspirations and aspirations. There is such a long path forward from selecting materials and arranging them in a satisfying way. Then you have to show your piece to others.
It is so scary, risky, fraught with anxiety, difficult to decide, sometimes impossible to fully visualize. Yes, you answer to yourself and your own sense of aesthetics and construction. But yet, you make things for other people to wear, perhaps to buy, perhaps to display, perhaps to comment and evaluate and criticize and tear to shreds. Or ‘like’ it on some level.
Befuddling. Yes, indeed.
And perhaps a bit overwhelming. Somewhat un-motivating. Somewhat problematic.
Head-Game
The act of making jewelry, at any point, in any and every situation, forces too many rules and social conventions upon you. Rules of construction. Rules of aesthetics. Rules of meaning. You must sift through all these rules, lest they paralyze you. So you choose what you want and think will work and think will be OK. And, yes, your choices are leading you in a direction of satisfaction and happiness — you are, after all, narrowing the feasible, the possible and the desirable. But you also find yourself partly or fully forced to be compliant to the expectations of others.
At this initial point, everything is not fully satisfying. You are trying to figure out what to do. What direction. What options. How should I start? What pieces do I need? What colors do I want to use? What clasp? Stringing material? Process of construction? Where will I find everything I need? What will they like? What will they want? Why will they pay for it?
Thoughtfully Alone
But, finally, these questions get some answers. You get to block out the world for a while. You get to be alone with your thoughts.
Yes, you have all the pieces picked. You have a sketch drawn out. And you begin to organize and assemble. You get in touch with your inner self. You rapidly search your cognitive rolodex, and settle in on the feelings and images and values and meanings and emotions you want to apply to your piece, and have that piece reflect. You positively go orgasmic with the colors you have selected and how these are arranged, and with your clever ideas to connect each element and fragment of your piece, one to the other. But at the same time, you go lethargic, meditative, rhythmic in the steps you take to make your piece, one step at a time, over and again, over and again, and once again.
Doubt and self-doubt rear their ugly heads. Will my idea work? Will my colors coordinate and blend? My materials mix? My artistic sense be maintained when subjected to my functional purposes? Can I translate what I see in my head to something real? How literal a path should I take from my inspiration to what I make? How far on a limb do I want to crawl?
When the jewelry designer sits down to make a piece of jewelry, how does it feel? The very act of making jewelry reconfirms for you the very act of being yourself. This feeling is other-worldly. You are the world, at least for this moment in time. This feeling is surreal. Creation in the absence of control.
Finally, you sit in front of your finished piece. You have created an object from nothingness. You have made the intangible tangible. You have forced objects and textures and patterns and colors into an uncharted space. You have transformed thread or wire or string and glass or metal or gemstone and sterling silver or gold-filled or pewter or brass into an expression of the personal. Your personal. You.
And for the moment, you have lived a befuddled life.
With many emotional highs and lows.
As loss of control, a whirlwind of creativity, and a reassertion of control.
And you smile.
Betwixt and Between
Design is a rite of passage. A voyage between the sacred and the profane. A relinquishing of control leading, by grit, perseverance and determination, to a re-imposition of control, structure, shape, silhouette, mass and construction.
You enter a period of liminality. Between the concluding night and the entering dawn. Somewhere above the ocean pouring over the horizon, but below the clouds in the sky along the far away horizon. You are thinking how to put words to your feelings of accomplishment. Set categories to the things you did, such as manipulating colors or materials. Determine forms and themes and segments and values and meanings. Explain all your feelings and choices and desires in words and concepts and phrases for others to recognize and understand.
This is a Rite of Passage. You must move from this ecstasy of your creative self to the reality that your jewelry is merely one object you are introducing into a complex and elaborated world. You must share what you have done with others, and, I know so well, can be very scary. Will they like it? Is there a place for this? Will they understand what I personally contributed to the design? Should I worry if someone might copy this? Or abuse it? Or abuse me in some way, as a designer?
Worldly
And as you successfully, so we hope, maneuver this Rite of Passage, and come out the other side, you return to this object before you. A piece of jewelry. Some metal, some stone, some string. You are ready to pick up that piece of jewelry off your work table, and show it to the world. Now you must sell its virtues. You must market its strengths and gloss over its weaknesses. How wearable is it? How beautiful? How appropriate for which person? In which context? How saleable? How usable?
The world impedes. Those ecstatic hours of creation, losing yourself in this process of essence, dreamily playing with colors, experimenting with arrangements, testing ideas about construction, are slowed down, are gone, are halted, until you begin to make your next piece.
In their place, your fun is tempered by history. By reality. By others determined that your creative self conforms to their ideas. And the ideas of their friends and acquaintances. And, in turn, their friends and acquaintances. Will your piece feel finished? Will they see it as coherent? Satisfying? Will the essence of your piece be contagious as it physically moves further and further away from you?
You are befuddled once again.
The process of designing jewelry is transformative.
The intangible is transformed into the tangible.
Sadness is transformed into happiness.
Shadow is transformed into light.
Inanimate objects are transformed into resonant ones.
The transformative powers of the jewelry designer are heroic. The designer overcomes the lethargy, the blah, the uninspired. The designer crafts functional beauty evoking response and emotion. The designer provides the key to the personal and social success of the wearer. The designer hopes to triumph, lest she or he fall into some kind of professional suicide, characterized by jeweler’s block, resistance, and many unfinished projects. Thus, becomes hero no more.
Is jewelry design, then, merely a cycle of vain-glorious misery? Some temporal happiness and joy following by some ill-defined period of existence? Full of doubts about whether the cycle will every complete itself, or re-start itself, even if it did?
So the question becomes, how do jewelry designers live with all this befuddlement? What keeps them happy? How can the successful jewelry designer think of himself or herself as a designer, fulfilled and happy,if he or she always lives in a world of uncertainty. If the designer personally dis-values their own work. If the designer doesn’t see himself or herself in his work. If the designer doesn’t imbue his or her work with meaning, life and force. If the designer never finishes what he or she started. If the designer substitutes quantity for quality. Or, if the designer only replays and reworks the works of others.
Then existence as a jewelry designer becomes futile.
One Principle of Jewelry Design Composition is called “PLANAR RELATIONSHIPS”. This primarily has to do with the placement of lines and planar surfaces within your piece, and how satisfying all this placement is, so that the lines and/or planes interrelate.
It turns out it is relatively easy to have lines and planes relate symmetrically. That is, it is easy to get people to be more satisfied with your pieces, if you makes things line up evenly to the right and to the left of your center point or line.
Conversely, it is not so easy when you try to create something asymmetrical. In fact, based on the art theory and cognitive psychology theory underlying this principle of planar relationships, I would say that, if your piece is asymmetrical, there must be something else on the person wearing the piece to create the illusion of symmetry. This might be the way the hair is styled, the pattern on a dress, the neckline silhouette of the dress, the shape and positioning of the person’s ears, and the like.
So, for those of you who have tried and succeeded, or tried and failed, to create asymmetrical pieces, how would you describe your design process? And people’s reactions to your piece? Or how it looked on the wearer? If successful, what kinds of things did you do in the design process, that worked in your favor?
Off-centered piece or someone wearing just one earring, can be disorienting and disturbing. How do you feel about asymmetrical pieces, or people wearing only one earring?
PLANAR RELATIONSHIPS
Planar Relationships refers to the degree the piece is not disorienting to the viewer, or particularly confusing in terms of what is up and what is down, or what is left and what is right.
People always need to orient themselves to their surroundings, so that they know what is up and what is down. They usually do this by recognizing the horizontal planes of the floor and the ceiling of a room (ground and sky outside), and the vertical planes of the walls of a room (buildings, trees and the like outside).
Jewelry must assist, or at least not get in the way of, this natural orienting process. It accomplishes this in how its “lines” are arranged and organized. If a piece is very 3-dimensional, then how its “planes” are arranged and organized becomes important, as well.
The goal here is to “see” the piece of jewelry, especially when worn, as something that is coherent, organized, controlled, and, especially, orienting.
Design elements we might use to achieve a satisfactory planar relationship within our piece:
— a strategic use of lines and planes
— shapes
— boundaries
— silhouettes
— contours
— symmetry, or, more difficult to achieve, a satisfying asymmetry
— a planar pattern in how each section of the piece relates to the other sections
— how sections of the piece interlock
— how we “draw and interrelate” parallel lines, perpendicular lines and curved lines within the piece
Example 1: Asymmetric Earrings
How can a person truly pull off wearing only one earring, or two very different earrings, one on each ear? After all, visually, it pulls the person off to one side, thus violating the basic orienting planar relationships. What about the composition of the earring, allows this to work; what about the composition doesn’t?
Example 2: Asymmetric Necklace
When wearing a necklace, where the clasp is worn on the side, instead of the back, sometimes this works, and sometimes it does not. Again, what about the composition of the necklace, allows this to work; what about the composition doesn’t?
With jewelry, asymmetry is a trend the pops up everyso often. In theory, it feels new, different, cool. It allows the wearer to assert a level of individuality and spirit. In practice, it can be awkward, but can be pulled off. As designers, when we want to achieve asymmetry, we have to fight off the brain’s natural tendency to want harmony and balance, thus symmetry.
The easiest way to achieve this is to use other environmental clues — hair styles, clothing styles, patterns in fabric — to assist. We can also play with things like volume, mass and color proportions, where both sides of a piece are visually different, but equal in either total volume, total mass or total color proportions, as if the piece of jewelry were a surrogate balance scale.
There are big bead people and little bead people. Some bead stringers like to say, “The older the person, the bigger the beads,” but I’m sure bead weavers would beg to disagree. For little bead people, there are thousands of colors and hundreds of shapes and sizes of what we call Seed Beads. These little bead people bead-weave, bead-string, and wire-work for all kinds of folks, situations.
The basic shape of seed bead is what we call “roundish” or “squared round”. They are round in the middle and squared on the ends. Sometimes the label “Seed Bead” refers to this specific shape; othertimes the label refers to the whole family of shapes.
There are many other shapes in this family of seed beads. For each shape listed below, they also come in different sizes and many different colors and finishes. These shapes include:
Cuts or Hex Cuts (seed beads that are cut from a six-sided hexagonal tube, rather than from a smooth cylinder, so that each bead has 6 sides)
Charlottes or True Cuts (single faceted roundish seed beads, thus each bead has only one faceted side) NOTE: Charlottes are made this way. True Cuts are accidents at the factory where the regular squared roundish seed beads haven’t cooled appropriately, and get flat on the size they were resting on.
Tri-Cuts (3 and more facets on roundish seed beads)
Bugles (tube shape, available in several lengths and diameters) Twist Bugles and Twists (very short tubes with a twist in them)
Nibblettes (1-hole flat rectangle bead) or Tila Beads (2-hole square rectangle bead)
Cubes or Squares
Triangles Some triangles have smooth, rounded edges; others have sharp edges. NOTE: In bead weavings, you can get a neat texture with the triangle — point / flat-surface / point / flat-surface/ point /flat-surface / etc.
Mini Fringe Drops or Raindrops (teardrops that are roundish, with a centered hole through the top)
Magatamas (teadrops that are more squarish, with an off-centered hole through the top)
Cylinder Beads (sometimes called by the major brand name which is Delica)
Superduos (one of many 2-hole seed beads)
…among others…
Just like the Druks and Fire Polish beads, and the crystal beads, seed beads are made in different countries, and knowing what country they come from, tells you a lot about their quality and usefulness.
The color names and color code numbers vary quite a bit from country to country. The actual shapes, sizes and color tones vary quite a bit, as well, making it difficult to mix beads from different countries within the same project.
CZECH SEED BEADS: The Czech Republic is one of the major sources for glass seed beads. The Czech Seed Bead is your minimal quality seed bead for jewelry making purposes. Anything lower in quality is useless for jewelry. All jewelry moves when worn, and this movement subjects each component to tremendous forces. Lower quality seed beads cannot hold up in the face of these forces. With lower quality seed beads, the holes are too sharp, the beads break easily under pressure, the finishes bleed into fabrics.
Thus, you need higher quality beads and other components for jewelry, than you would use for something stationery, like a beaded Christmas ornament.
So, I will give the Czech Seed Bead a grade of a “C”, and say that this is the lowest price you will pay, if you are using these for jewelry.
Most Czech seed beads come on hanks, and you usually buy these by the hank. You buy the whole hank. Hanks are usually 10–12 apprx 16”-strands tied off together; however, there is a lot of variation on what ends up getting tied together and labeled as a hank.
While most Czech seed beads on a hank are the same size, a sizeable number are not. If you are doing a pattern or a picture, you will either have to keep adding and subtracting beads as you go through the pattern, or you will have to cull all your beads up front so you are starting with the same sizes.
The hole size in these beads varies widely from bead to bead. The holes are too small to notice ahead of time. Many seed bead projects require that you go through the same bead with your needle and thread 5, 6, 7 or 8 or more times. If you can’t get that needle through one more time, often you are stuck. Sometimes you can compensate, but othertimes you just have to start over again.
These holes would be called “generally smooth”, but I think they are really pushing the marketing here. These holes are very rough.
You can have a high degree of trust on the finishes of these beads, but there are a sizeable number of colors that fade, bleed out or rub off.
Seed bead systems are set up like paint by number systems. There are many, many colors. Some colors of beads are made through the manipulation and coloration of glass alone. But you can’t make every color in these paint-by-number type systems using glass alone. Some processes for creating a color, such as galvanized, coated, lined, some metallics or dyed, are not always stable. When working with seed beads, you end up learning what these unstable colors are. Sometimes, the problems result when the beads rub onto something else; othertimes, the finishes react with chemicals like oils, or ammonia or sulfides on the skin or in sweat; still othertimes, sunlight lightens or fades them. Many pinks, reds and purples, as well as unusually bright colors are problematic.
If working with unstable colors, what you do is you spray your finished project with a clear fixative called Krylon. You buy this in an art or craft store. If it’s a baked on finish, the Krylon hardens the shell. If a dyed finish — remember glass looks like a sponge — using the Krylon is like putting a plug in each of the holes to keep the dye from leaching out.
Another thing you can do is dip your finished piece in Future clear acrylic floor wax, and then air dry it. This will stiffen your piece a bit, but also protect the finishes on your beads.
You can use a sealant. You purchase this in the paint section, usually near the metallic paints, of an art or craft store. Sealants may alter the colors a bit, and leave your project glossier.
JAPANESE SEED BEADS: I would give the Japanese seed beads a grade of an “A”. You buy these “loose” rather than on “hanks”. We usually get a big bag of beads and we re-tube these in the shop. The Japanese seed beads run about 1/3 more in price than the Czech ones.
Most of the beads in the tube are the same size.
They have a good size hole. The hole from bead to bead is the same size.
These holes are called “generally smooth”, meaning they look like a broken coke bottle, but no where’s near as rough as the Czech ones.
You can have the same trust on the finishes of the Japanese as you do with the Czech. It’s pretty much those same colors that fade, bleed out or rub off. [Again, you would use a clear Krylon fixative spray.]
There are 3 companies in Japan which manufacture seed beads. These are Miyuki, Toho, and Matsuno. It is often difficult to mix beads made by these different companies. The supposedly same-size beads actually vary in size from company to company. Miyuki and Toho beads are very regular and consistent in size from bead to bead. Matsuno beads are not. The color-palettes and underlying tonal qualities vary from company to company.
You will find that the color code numbers do not follow a strict pattern, say, all the reds or all the opaques or all the silver lines sharing a number series. The Japanese also frequently change the color names associated with each code. This can get confusing.
The “DON’T-USE-THESE-SEED-BEADS-FROM-THESE-COUNTRIES” Beads: For jewelry, you will definitely want to avoid using seed beads made in India, China, or Taiwan. These break easily, the finishes are very unreliable, hole sizes vary widely, holes are very sharp. These do not hold up well under the forces that jewelry is subjected to. They more easily discolor or bleed into fabrics.
Getting Started With Seed Beads: When starting with seed beads, we suggest that people try both the Czech and the Japanese, and see which ones they like best. The Japanese are more expensive than the Czech, but not that much more expensive. The Japanese ones are definitely easier to use.
However, one problem with the Japanese seed beads is that they are too perfect. Sometimes when your seed beads are too perfect, your outcome comes out like a paint-by-number Elvis on velvet. Because of the little irregularities from bead to bead in the Czech line, your outcome looks more organic, more artistic. If you were creating an ethnic looking piece, Japanese seed beads would make it look machine-made; Czech seed beads would make it look hand-made.
Buy all your seed beads upfront.Seed Bead colors vary from batch to batch. The color of the bead is affected by the barometric pressure outside the factory where and when they are made, and this is something the factory cannot control. Most seed bead projects take 40–60 hours to complete. That means, you need to buy all your beads, or even a little bit more, right up front. You might come back to the store 2 weeks later, and your 11/0–404 will be a different shade than that 11/0–404 now in the shop. So, find out about your store’s exchange policy. At our shop, we don’t give cash back. We do an even exchange or a store credit.
Above is an image of the same color from two different color batches.
Seed Beads Sizes — An Unusual Numbering System
Most of the seed bead styles use an unusual labeling system to denote sizes. For example, you have 18/0’s and 16/0’s and 15/0’s and 14/0’s and 13/0’s and 12/0’s and 11/0’s and 10/0’s and 8/0’s and 6/0’ and 5/0’s, and you get the picture. What these numbers mean — and had more meaning hundreds of years ago — is how many beads per inch. They don’t really work out as beads per inch, but for the main sizes between 18/0 and 6/0, they come close enough. But if you had to visualize whether an 8/0 is bigger or smaller than a 6/0, visualize beads per inch.
An aught-size may be written as a fraction (11/0), as a number followed by a degree symbol (11o), or simply as a number (11).
The most-used size for more art- and design-oriented projects is the 11/0. The most-used size for more craft-oriented projects is the 10/0. You would most likely find 11/0’s in a bead store, and most likely find 10/0’s in a craft store. Basically, the smaller the bead, the less gaps of light between each bead, and thus a stronger, more intense, and sharper result.
Native Americans like to use sizes 18/0 and 16/0, but you won’t find these in too many places outside areas catering to Native Americans. I remember once visiting a bead store in Gallop, New Mexico, and they had a wall full of hundreds of colors of 18/0 and 16/0 seed beads — — they took up as big an area as our 11/0’s take up in our shop. And we have a lot of 11/0s!
Believe me, even the 15/0’s scare me and put me on edge, because they are so small. I can’t imagine working with 16/0’s and 18/0’s!
Cautions:
Japanese seed beads tend to be a little larger than their Czech counterparts. So, an 11/0 Japanese seed bead will be little larger than a Czech 11/0.
Japanese seed beads are more tubular shaped. Czech seed beads are more saucer shaped.
The actual sizes of seed beads will vary by the finish on the bead. So, transparent amethyst will be smaller than transparent amethyst AB, which in turn is smaller than amethyst Ceylon, and this smaller than galvanized amethyst metallic.
There are three companies in Japan that make seed beads — Miyuki, Toho, and Matsuno. The shapes and actual sizes of the beads from each of these companies vary slightly. The consistency of seed beads within any batch and color is relatively high for Toho and Miyuki, but not so great with Matsuno. The stable/unstable finishes of colors is similar across brands. Most how-to books refer to Miyuki products. Toho has some very unusual colors.
E-Beads
In many pattern books, they tell you to use what’s called an E-Bead. Here they are referring to either a size 5/0 or size 6/0 seed bead. This vague label — E-Bead — was more useful pre-Internet. Today, since there is a size difference between 5’s and 6’s, pattern books can tell you exactly which size to get, and between stores and the internet, you can find exactly what you need. It seems, at times, that the only reason to preserve this vague naming convention is a snotty one — I know what this means and you don’t. Well, now you know what it means.
People started using this naming convention years ago, but in a slightly different way. Years ago, people were told they could substitute an E-bead — either a size 5/0 or 6/0 — for a 4mm round Druk. The 5’s and 6’s are close to 4mm. It’s very expensive and difficult to make a perfectly round bead. So a long time ago, people were telling other crafters that they could substitute a cheaper E-bead in projects where they would use a 4mm round Druk.
It’s also a bad naming convention in that all seed beads are E-Beads. E-Beads refers to how these were originally made. These beads all started as a long tube of glass. The tube was put through what looks like a bread slicer. The shape of the slicer was in the form of the letter E.
Cylinder Beads or Delicas
The cylinder beads or delicas are one of the few beads in the store that we weigh, before we put them into tubes. So these are like cocaine. The same color in a delica might be 3–10 times the price of that color in the squared roundish seed bead lines.
Today, there are many brands of cylinder beads. One of the original brands was “Delica” by Miyuki. Sometimes “Delicas” is used as the generic name, like Kleenex is sometimes used as a generic name. In older pattern books, they tell you to use Delicas. In newer pattern books, they tell you to use Cylinder beads.
There is a bad naming convention around these cylinder beads. Some places label their cylinder or delicas size as 11/0; others as 12/0. In this case, they are referring to the same bead. They are called 12/0’s because they are the same size as a 12/0 seed bead. They are called 11/0’s because they are used interchangeably with the slightly larger 11/0 seed bead. They are used interchangeably with the slightly larger bead because of the shape difference. A seed bead is basically a ball; a cylinder bead is a brick. That shape difference makes them interchangeable with the slightly larger bead.
I want to give you an idea of what it means to interchange seed beads (the squared roundish basic shape) and delicas (cylinder beads). I know, when I started beading and jewelry making, I had originally shied away from delicas, because of their price. But I use them regularly now.
Let’s go back to the example of the eyeglass leash. If your eyeglass leash was all seed beads, and you were standing against the light, you would see the ridges along the sides of the beads. If you used delicas, they line up perfectly. You would see a solid line of color. When people view a solid line of color, they see the piece as higher end.
Say you were in the eyeglass leash business, and did a low-end $20.00 market and a higher end $60.00 market. If you used seed beads in your $60.00 market, your pieces wouldn’t sell because they would look cheap. If you used delicas in your $20.00 market, your pieces wouldn’t sell either. These make the pieces seem out of place, and people avoid them. You use so few beads in a project like an eyeglass leash, that the cost differences are just fractions of a penny. But there are huge perceptual differences.
If you’re an artist doing two types of markets — low and high ends — you don’t necessarily have to come up with different designs for both markets. You can trade out seed beads and delicas within the same overall design, and play with people’s perceptions.
Suppose you wanted to do an amulet bag, or some kind of bead-weaving that approximates a piece of cloth. If you used seed beads, there would be little gaps of light between each bead. If your piece were a solid color, it would look less intense. If it were a pattern or a picture, it would look less sharp. If you used delicas, these line up perfectly like a brick wall. If the piece were a solid color, it would look more intense. If a pattern or a picture, it would look sharper.
With seed beads, they have little ridges on them, and when you try to move the piece, they catch on each other and the piece feels stiff. With cylinder beads, when you move the piece, it feels much more like a piece of cloth.
Now let’s say you wanted to do an amulet purse and went to the cash register with seed beads. These might ring up as $15.00. If you went to the register with delicas, these might right up as $150.00. There’s a lot of sticker shock at the register. But these kinds of projects take 40–60 hours to do. In this context, your biggest investment is your labor. The cost of the beads doesn’t seem quite so horrific. And in most situations, you get a better outcome with the delicas.
Cuts, Hex Cuts, Charlottes and True Cuts
People value brightness. They try all different kinds of strategies and manufacturing techniques to get their beads to be brighter and brighter and brighter. In crystal beads, they add lead. But lead is expensive. When they can’t afford lead, one technique is to facet the glass. A smooth, roundish glass surface absorbs most light that hits it, and reflects very little. A faceted glass surface absorbs less light and reflects more of it. That makes it seem, to the viewer, that it is brighter.
There are different types of faceted seed beads. The main type is called a Hex Cut, (often referred to simply as “cuts”). A hex cut seed bead has 6 faceted sides.
Another type of faceted seed bead is called a Charlotte or a True Cut. These beads have only one facet on each bead. So you see one flat surface and the rest is rounded. Charlottes are made that way. True Cuts are accidents at the factory where the regular seed beads are resting on a flat surface, but hadn’t cooled enough, so one side got flat.
Charlottes and True Cuts traditionally were mostly used in costuming. They are more and more used in jewelry. Picture the country music artist coming out on stage at the Ryman Auditorium — the mother church of country music. An area of her costume has been embroidered with Charlottes. Because of the 1-sided-facets of the charlottes, the faceted sides of these beads will face up randomly. As the spot lights hit the costume, the facets reflect the light back into the audience, but in a random, unpredictable way.
Suppose the costume had been embroidered with hex cuts. When the light hits the costume, all the facets are facing up in a very predictable way. These regularly positioned facets will reflect the light back into the audience in a predictable way.
The difference in effect is immediate. The unpredictable flashes of light into the audience, as reflected by the charlottes or true cuts, heightens the audiences’ experience with the performance. And this would be much moreso than had hex cuts been used instead. With hex cuts, the audience would soon be able to subconsciously predict the pattern of light bouncing off from the artist, and actually get a little bored from this.
It has always seemed to me that society has a strong bias against women and their ability to make choices. Men are decisive; women are not. That’s what society seems to say, So are women incapable of making choices in the pursuit of fashion Which bead color, color combination, style, silhouette? Which bead stitch? Which arrangement of beads and parts and pendants on a necklace? Which metal? Which stringing material? For women, so society seems to say, it seems the implications of any one choice are imbued with so many social and personal and cultural and situational issues, that it becomes too overwhelming to make.
The fact today, or I hope it is a fact today, however, is that we can use “women” and “choices” in the same meaningful and positive sentence. The pursuit of fashion knows no gender biases. Yet, this might be considered a relatively new phenomenon. For it was not always that way — or at least, as society viewed it. It took hundreds of years of feminism, strident and subtle, violent and passive, to change society’s views of how women think, and if they could think at all. There’s been a lot of kicking and screaming, put-downs and denials, resistance and sabotage, cruelty and abuse that has occurred during my lifetime, and before, to get to the place where women are today. Not all women that come into the bead store are as appreciative of their feminist sisters who opened so many doors and opportunities. And not all women are as aware of their gender-history, as they should be.
It was Darwin who wrote, in the latter part of the 19th century, that women were not as evolved as men. They were given equal amounts of protoplasm as men. But women were incapable of using that protoplasm. God made women to procreate. Procreation was a totally biological function, requiring no thought. Raising children was a biological function, requiring no thought. If forced to use their brains, women became ill, exhausted, infected, disordered. Only men had the will, ability and motivation to think. And in deference to women, men had to think for them, as well.
The 19th century thinkers were thus enlightened. The tasks of men required intelligence. The activities of women did not. Women lacked the ability to reason and comprehend general principals. Women would not have evolved at all if they had not been blessed, because of evolution, with men’s brains. The argument continued, if women had not been blessed with men’s brains, they would not have been able to procreate. And thus, the human species would have become extinct.
Craniologists, at the time, found that men’s brains were bigger than women’s brains, and thus concluded female inferiority. However, one scientist, proceeding along this same line of research, found out that, on average, German brains were 100 grams heavier than French brains. And this line of research ended abruptly, for fear of fomenting civil conflict. And so, too, ended any more research comparing the brain matter of women to that of men.
Physicists, at the time, speculated that each human organism had a finite amount of energy. Women had to expend so much energy on reproduction, that they did not have enough energy left over to think. Men had this excess energy, so they could think. Since women eat less than men, women also had a harder time generating new energy.
Educators, at the time, used Darwin’s explanations as reasons for denying women an education. Since women could not think logically, they could not be taught to do so. It was the widely held belief that women could not grasp knowledge.
Physicians, at the time, described all illnesses affecting women, as symptoms of one illness only — a disease of the womb. To cure any disease, meant some surgical, physically abusive and cruel treatment applied to the woman’s reproductive organs. A common prescriptive was to tell the woman to think less, in order to cure herself. Sleep more. Never touch a pen, brush or pencil as long as you will live.
Advice Columnists, at the time, and this is 1849 New York, advised women about their expenditures on dress. Do not delude yourself with appearance, they wrote.
– Do not permit fashion to impair your health — Do not allow dress to infringe on your delicacy — Do not allow unnecessary expenses on fashion — Do not spend too much time with fashion
In Boston (1840), one Advice Columnist went so far as to warn women to wholly lay aside their ornaments, as fast as possible, if they expected to have any sense of well-being. It was a mark of bad judgment for a woman to pursue fashion.
Wow! I think I need to knock Darwin, and certainly some of his contemporaries, down a few notches. And what does this all mean for beaders and jewelry designers and fashionistas? From the 19th century scientific point of view, a craft like beading or jewelry making would have to be primarily intuitive, requiring no thought or logic. It would have been beneath a man to do. For men to get involved with beading or jewelry making, it would have meant resisting evolution, and resisting progress.
Beading and jewelry making, from the Design perspective, are very much about making choices. Women are assumed and subsumed to be as capable as men. Beading and jewelry making are processes of construction, whether conceived and executed by women or men, which happen within an environment, and the results of which are judged as art, as the pieces are worn. There’s a lot of choice going on here. What goes together, and what does not. What will hold the structure of the piece together, and what will not. What you want to happen to the piece over time, and what you do not.
The Designer, whether woman or man, has to make the same kinds of choices, to be successful. Perhaps there are nuanced differences between women and men, in how they think through and come to any choice. I do not know. But the choices need to be made, nonetheless.
It’s always been a little confusing in society about how women should relate to their husbands, and how husbands should relate to their wives — especially while shopping for beads, clasps, stringing materials and other findings in a bead shop.
It’s not just in a bead shop. I remember coming home one winter vacation. My stepmother was a bit frantic. She was unable to cook my dad meals. The oven and 2 burners on the stove no longer worked. She had asked my dad if they could buy a new one, and he said “No.”.
I doubt my father truly understood what was getting asked of him. It seemed out of character for him to say No. But my stepmother was afraid to ask him again. So she was very stressed at having to prepare meals everyday on the two burners that were left. My father, and this was in character, never noticed her dilemma.
She felt the bible instructed her to abide by whatever my dad said. I took her aside. I told her firmly that in the Old Testament, and we’re Jewish, so we go by the Old Testament, it relates that the “woman” is the head of the household, and that the “man” is head of everything else. So, I further instructed, if the oven goes kaput, it’s her responsibility, under God, to get a new one. My father has no jurisdiction here.
Thus Anna found herself a new oven. And she gave my father the bill.
The bible is actually very confusing when it comes to delineating appropriate roles and relationships between men and women, and husbands and wives. Take the book of Genesis — the root of all things. It turns out, there were many, many, many versions of this first book of the bible. In some versions, Adam and Eve were equals. In other versions, Adam was more equal than Eve, and in still other versions, Eve was more equal than Adam. Some versions even threw in a 3rd party — Lilith. Dreadful Lilith. So we have stories where it’s Lilith vs. Adam and Eve. Lilith and Adam vs. Eve. Lilith and Eve vs. Adam. Lilith, Adam and Eve.
So, among these very ancient biblical and co-biblical texts, we have a plethora and cornucopia of sexual relationships, power relationships, gender relationships, and sexuality relationships. We have pairs and triplets, straight and gay, feminine and masculine. And it was up to a committee — probably all made up of men — to pick one of these many versions to incorporate into the official bible as the Book of Genesis. Guess which one they picked.
But if we were trying to sort out which version of the truth about Genesis was more correct, and more Godly and God-inspired, things would be somewhat confusing. It’s unclear if God had any plan about the relationships between men and women. Perhaps any thought about the relationships between men and women is trivial, when compared to creating the whole universe.
I don’t know.
And it’s clear that many other people don’t know.
When we look at how women relate to their husbands, when they come into the bead shop, we find many contemporary interpretations and re-enactments of these historical dilemmas. And we watch in amazement as husbands and wives play out their respective roles.
He drops her off, and goes elsewhere. He drops her off, and waits patiently. He drops her off, and waits impatiently. … waits sitting in the store … waits sitting in the car He is embarrassed to be seen in or near a bead shop.
He won’t get near a bead shop. He is someone who will drive her anywhere, anytime, any place. He loves what she does. He comes into the bead shop, and follows her up and down all the aisles, but says nothing. He comes into the bead shop, and follows her up and down all the aisles, and offers lots of advice.
He likes to make all the final decisions. He hates making any kind of decision. He likes to know exactly how much she spends. He prefers her not to tell him exactly how much she spends. He is never told what she spends. He is easily convinced that all her shopping will lead to something, like jewelry getting sold. He worries you haven’t bought enough. He tells her she really has enough already.
He tells her she needs to stop beading. He tells her she can’t continue to shop at bead stores. He figures the more she spends at the bead shop, the more he can spend on himself for his own hobbies and endeavors.
Should there be rules here? Should every woman show the same deference to her husband? Should every husband show the same deference, in return? Or should each woman be left to her own wiles and devices? Do husbands have shades of character, for which the wife must gracefully conceal, or relegate to some other universe, or trod on in spite of?
To gain some more insight here, you could almost create a HUSBANDS OF WOMEN WHO BEAD TAROT deck, to explain all the relationship variations and how these get expressed in the bead shop. For example,
THE FOOL Jalinda pays for her beads by check, and writes “Kroger” in the memo line. Kathy uses a secret bank account to pay for her beading supplies. Alice had returned home from a bead show with a small bag of beads. How much did you spend, her husband asked. $25.00, she replied, as she stashed her $1,032.00 bag of beads in her craft room. Sally has her system all worked out. She uses a joint checking account to pay for the part of her beads she wants her husband to see. She pays for another part of her beads with a personal checking account that her husband might accidentally see. And she pays for the last part of her beads with a check from her son’s bank account, which her husband will never see. These husbands are played for fools.
THE SAINT Jerome has taken an active interest in his wife’s hobby. He looks forward to their bead store trips. He’s very up on what she is doing, and what her goals are. He can do more than tag along as she goes up and down the aisles. He can actually shop for her on his own, and pick the right things she needs. This husband is what women often refer to as “highly evolved.”
THE EMPEROR Everytime Mark comes into the shop, he says, “I don’t ask her to go to tractor shops, why would I go to a bead shop?” These husbands have their own lives, separate from those of their wives, and no issues about that. On the one hand they show self-confidence; but on the other hand, they show a fear and an avoidance of things with which they don’t want to deal.
THE HANGED MAN This husband brings the wife to the bead shop, but sits off to the side, or sits in his car — often for hours. He has little interaction with his wife, but his just-enough-visible-presence strangely hangs over the shopping situation. This husband is unwilling to make an effort to share his wife’s endeavors. Netty had this kind of husband. They were Southern Baptist. After 22 years of marriage, her husband informed her that he believed God required that she now be subordinate to him. She couldn’t reconcile reality with her and his beliefs. So her trips to the bead store grew longer and longer and more frequent. She kept her husband waiting in the car while she spent his money on everything she could think of. About every 1 ½ to 2 hours, he would come into the store to check on her, and she would say, “It will just be a few more minutes, dear, go back to the car.” She’d make a funny face as he headed back for his car.
THE INVESTOR After his wife toils away for hours on end, but, come the next morning, decides she doesn’t like her evolving piece, and takes it apart, the husband asks, “How can you do that, after putting in all those hours!?#@ This husband shows disapproval, assuming his wife lacks vision and purpose.
You’ve seen all these husbands before. Few people have worked out the perfect husband-wife relationship. So the tensions get played out over and over again, with each trip to the bead store, as one or the other or both begin to shop.
The Design Question here — that is, the implications for finding inspiration and turning this into jewelry — is how well the woman manages her husband, and the roles required of each in their relationship, whatever type of relationship they have, when they shop for parts.
No matter what Tarot Card in the deck the husband seems to be. So no husband-type or behavior-pattern is better or more appropriate or more suited to finding oneself in Design. It’s a matter of, given a particular relationship, what choices does the woman (or her husband, for that matter) need to make, in order to get there?
Women get together and bead. They sit around a table. They talk. They gossip. They share bead stories. They share personal stories. They complain about the difficulties in life, and they extol the joys of living their lives. And they bead. At least a little. Some more than others. But it’s often difficult to tell if the talk is more important, or the beading. Or if all the talk is too distracting for some. Or not distracting enough.
Women get together and bead in classes. They get together and bead around the dining room tables in their homes. They attend workshops, and sit in a circle and bead. They join bead societies, and sit in a circle and bead. They arrange retreats so that they can sit in circles and bead. Why do so many woman like to sit around in a circle and talk and bead? Vera says it’s so I can get an education about women when I’m with women.
But anthropologists tell us this was always so. Women sat in circles and talked and crafted. The circles provided a measure of convenience. They provided a sense of safety. They allowed women to reconfirm their places within the group. They allowed women to learn the basic rituals in life, and to transfer this knowledge to their children. They offered women some sharing of responsibilities, especially for child raising.
It was because women so frequently came together to sit, circular, with one another, and because the tasks they did, while in these circles, were so involved and complex, that language was born. Women had a lot to say. They had to keep their children alive. They had to influence their child’s development. They had to balance the gathering of food with the rearing of children. A few guttural sounds, and the waving of hands, was insufficient. So a language of purpose was born, and the circles of women had one more added responsibility — keeping the language going.
Men, on the other hand, only needed a few sounds to get through their day. A “grunt” for “This is a good place to hunt.” A “grunt-grunt” for “Here comes the woolly mammoth”. And a “grunt-grunt-grunt” for “Run, here comes the woolly mammoth!”
Men also had an “Ah” for “This rock looks like it will sharpen up well.” They had an “Ah-Ah” for “I’ve made a sharp point with this rock.” There was an “Ah-Ah-Ah” for “Look at the spear I’ve made with this sharp rock point.” And then an “Aaaaaahhhh!” for “I speared myself with my sharp rock point!”
These grunts and ah’s would get the men through their day. They were sufficient.
But not for the women. Grunts and ah’s couldn’t capture ideas like, “Your baby threw up over me,” or, “Don’t eat those berries — they’re poisonous,” or, “These leaves and shoots would make a pretty dress.”
At first, in the earliest circles of women, various women would invent words, but they would talk across each other. [I’ve heard some say that this continues even until today.] Women had difficulty making themselves heard and understood. They might try shouting the word louder, or more frequently, or right into another woman’s face. But this probably precipitated fighting, perhaps a punch in the face. Early language use was probably a tower of Babel — no one speaking the same things.
To rein this in, to correct for this chaos, to bring order to language, rituals were born. By convincing all the women in a circle to perform in the same way, they could label each performance. And with each label, everyone could understand. Some rituals were religious. Some were social. Some social rituals were oriented around life cycle events, like birth, puberty, marriage and death. Some social rituals were oriented around the gathering and preparing of food. And other social rituals were oriented around making things. It was important that everyone perform in the same way, do the same things, and use the same labels for things. This had survival value.
Concepts were channeled into words. Words delineated activities and events. Women whose performance held closest to the words — as defined by the beliefs about the concepts underlying these words — had higher status. Women were keepers of the “word”, and those that did a better job of “keeping”, had higher status. These women were judged better. More right. More righteous. More proficient.
And beading and jewelry making were eventually born. Women used the small seeds and berries around them to adorn themselves. They added small shells, pieces off bushes and trees, and animal parts. They figured out ways to string these together and secure them in place. They developed the “Needle” and concepts for making and utilizing these needles. And women sought to preserve beading by performing it over and over again in the same way. And performing it within their tight circles. And with the smaller materials, objects and tools they had at hand.
Which brings us to men.
Men made jewelry, too. They made jewelry that did not need an elaborated language to inform them what to do. Given how men envisioned the design of hand-made things, they gravitated towards larger objects. Men hammered these. They put holes in things. They bent things into hooks, and rings, and connectors. Their jewelry was informed by strength. It didn’t take much of a language to demonstrate how to hammer things and make holes in things. They could easily teach others.
And this teaching was a source of power and strength. Men who could teach faster had higher status. Those that could develop tools to hammer and drill faster, cleaner, better, more exacting, using ever-harder and harder stones and other materials, continued to have higher status. Those that could build mechanical devices to achieve even better ends, secured their higher status.
For women, large, heavy tools and objects were inconvenient. They preferred smaller things they could manipulate, while gathering nuts and berries, and while nursing and caring for their children. Women relied on their fingers and hands in different ways than men. Some might suggest this was only a difference in scale; others might argue that these differences were significant. But the importance of the hand in craft was critical from the start.
As humans, for both WOMEN and men, their beading and jewelry making were informed by a sense of design. Undeniably, there was always a sense of design in craft. The degree to which WOMEN and men could implement their design sense, however, was limited by language and ritual. If they couldn’t provide a Name for something that they could envision in their mind, it was difficult to make it so. If they couldn’t create ways to teach themselves or others to recreate these Imaginations over and over again, the design concepts would be lost. And humanity would be lost. Or at least, set back.
Earliest humans most often assigned spiritual meanings to words and concepts associated with jewelry, to help them remember their sense of design. Some shapes and designs became strongly associated with social rules and social preservation. Eventually Art was born, and many more meanings could be assigned, and assigned in more complicated, elaborated ways. The expression of design would come to have many more pathways. It became much easier to progress with humanity. And more challenging. And more fulfilling.
Whether the ways of WOMEN or the ways of men were better at fostering jewelry, beading, design and creativity, … well, this battle is still getting fought out today.
Crystal is glass with lead in it. The more lead you put into the glass, the brighter the glass is. Lead causes health effects. If you looked at glass under a microscope, it would look like a sponge. Basically anything you put into glass, like lead or a dye, will leach out when the glass gets wet, such as when washing or sweating.
The negative health effects of lead result from an accumulation of lead in your body. It doesn’t really leave your body once there. The major way lead gets into your body is ingestion — through the mouth — but it can be absorbed through the skin. So, for jewelry, there is some concern with the older leaded crystal when it touches the skin, or when your hands touch the jewelry and you touch them to your mouth, or you put the jewelry in your mouth. The U.S. has done an incredible job of reducing lead exposure to the general population, but we still have some concerns with the older crystal beads.
The international community started regulating the amount of lead in glass crystal around 1970. They didn’t take it all out, or a big amount all at once. They’ve gradually reduced the amount of lead in crystal. Supposedly, the amount of lead in crystal today is an acceptable risk. They can’t take it all out because then there would be no crystal, and the world would fall apart.
It turns out, as you go back in time, there is more and more lead in crystal. The barrier to putting lead in crystal before regulation was the price of the lead, and lead always went up in price. So there’s more lead in the 1950’s than the 1960’s; more in the 1940’s than the 1950’s; more in the 1930’s than the 1940’s; and so forth. The crystal beads today seem very bright and attractive, but if you held them up next to beads from the 1930’s and 1920’s, the newer ones would look dull and uninteresting like plastic. If you are re-working old jewelry or working with old beads, ideally, you would want to either make things so they are worn over cloth, or put non-crystal beads on either side of your crystal ones, so they are raised above the skin.
Crystal beads are very, very popular. People really value that brightness. They are more expensive than regular glass, but not that much more expensive. These beads are always in high demand. They are always in short supply. The market for distributing and selling these beads is a bit screwy.
And this is the kind of bead that businesses actively try to scam their customers on. I want to give you a sense of what those scams are, and what questions to ask.
SCAM #1: Selling You New Stuff, But Labeling It As Old
The older crystal has much more lead in it, so is considerably brighter and more attractive. Way back when there were some very interesting colors, coloration effects and faceting effects, that only recently have been duplicated or equaled. But they can’t duplicate the brightness. The brightness results from the lead content, not the faceting. Almost all the old stuff has been collected up, so people are not used to seeing it, and seeing any comparisons between old and new. The new stuff looks bright and appealing. People are generally trusting, so it’s easy to get away with.
So you can go into jewelry stores, bead stores, antique stores, estate sales, flea markets, on-line, and see a lot of new stuff getting labeled as old. The old stuff is much more valuable and collectible. If you held the new stuff up next to the old stuff, it would tend to look like plastic.
You won’t be carrying around with you a color chart that shows you color brightness by year of manufacture. But there’s a pretty easy test. If someone says something is old — an old piece of jewelry, or a bag of old beads, hold out your hand straight ahead of you and into the air, and tell them to put it into your hand. If it’s old, your hand will drop. Even if it’s from 1970, your hand will drop. You’re just not used to how heavy things were, when they had a lot of lead in them. When you get back to the 1920’s, each bead is like a lead pellet. One bead will make your hand drop.
If you hand doesn’t drop, then maybe it’s not as old as they are saying, or maybe it’s new.
SCAM #2: Selling You Stuff From A Country Other-Than-Austria, But Telling You It’s Austrian
Just like the Druks and Fire Polish beads, crystal beads are made in many, many countries. Beads from different countries vary in quality, and again knowing what country they come from tells you about the quality and value. The scam here is selling you something from a lower quality country, and telling you it’s Austrian (the highest valued country). They either say they are going to give you a discount on the Austrian, or they pocket the difference.
Swarovski is a company based in Austria that makes the highest quality crystal, and the most expensive. They were the first company to make these, they have the best equipment, and are viewed as top of the line. While Swarovski has offices all over the world, they make these in Austria, (though we know today a lot of production is in China). There are other companies in Austria that either distribute these beads, or turn them into other kinds of jewelry components, but do not make these beads.
Another major source of crystal beads is The Czech Republic. A major Czech crystal manufacturer is Preciosa. Czech crystal usually runs about 10–15% less in cost than the Austrian. Swarovski does a lot of markting; the Czech companies do not. That price difference reflects the differences in marketing costs.
Some similarities and differences: Both the Czechs and the Austrians use the highest amount of lead allowed at any one time, so their beads are equally as bright.
The Austrians have a cultural preference for very sharp facets. The facets on these beads are so sharp that jewelry made with them can scratch the skin. The Czechs have a cultural preference for smoother facets. To the Austrians, the sharper facets make the beads look more like real diamonds. To the Czechs, smoother facets do. Americans seem to prefer the sharper facets. Remember, it’s primarily the lead that gives these pieces their brightness, not the faceting. The Czechs have been moving to sharper facets to compete with the Austrians, because America is the major market for these beads.
The Austrians start with a more intense color palette, and reinforce that intensity through slight modifications in the shape of the bead. You can see this best in the bi-cone, which they make a little less symmetrical and a little more saucer like. This affects how the light refracts through the glass, thus increasing the color intensity.
The Czechs use what I call crayon colors. What’s nice here is that if you are looking for basic colors, like a red-red, or a green-green, you are more likely and more easily to find this color in the Czech line — even though Swarovski offers hundreds of color choices. For example, to get a red-red in the Swarovski line, you would get a red-orange.
The Austrian crystal beads tend to be slightly different in size, because of this shape difference, than advertised. So, if you were purchasing a 4mm bicone, the Austrian crystal is actually 3x4mm; the Czech crystal (and crystal from any other country other than Austria) is 4x4mm. Austrian bicones are smaller than the size you see on their label.
The size differences in the round shape are more difficult to spot. Swarovski also altered its round shapes slightly in the early 2000’s. An 8mm round crystal from any other country would be 8mm x 8mm. From Austria, the older ones are 8mm x 7.5mm. The newer ones are 8mm x 8.5mm. Again, the slightly altered shape changes the way the light refracts through the beads, and enhances the color’s intensity.
In the image below, both 4mm ruby AB bicones would be labeled the same size and color. Both have the same lead content, so they are equally as bright. The Czech color is less intense than the Austrian. The Czech bead is slightly larger and more symmetrical than the Austrian.
If you went into a store to buy 4mm Austrian crystal bicones, you won’t have a chart with you that shows you color intensity by country of manufacture. However, all you would have to do is pull off a strand of 4mm round druks off the wall, or ask to see some 4mm round sterling silver beads. If the 4mm crystal beads you are looking at are the same size as anything else that is 4mm, then the crystal beads are NOT from Austria. In the bicones, the Austrian will always be a different size than the label.
One woman who took one of my classes told the story where she had gone into a bead store she hadn’t been in before, to buy 5mm Austrian crystal bicones. The beads were smaller than 5mm, so she thought she was getting ripped off. She said she threw a temper tantrum, cursing out the store owner, and storming out. You see, it was the company she had been buying them from originally that was ripping her off. Theirs were 5mm.
One problem that people often have when they buy crystal beads from different sources is that many sources will label their crystal beads “Austrian”, but one might send you true Austrian, and another might send you Czech. There’s nothing wrong with Czech crystal. You are getting an equivalent product. The problem that arises is that the actual colors will be different, as will be the sizes and shapes. So, you can order 4mm ruby AB bicones from two sources, and if one sends you Austrian and the other sends you Czech, these will be so different from each other in color, size and shape, that they won’t mix in the same piece.
Another major source of crystal beads is China. While China is working on coming out with a line of crystal equivalent to Swarovski, most Chinese crystal you’ll find on the US market uses considerably less lead, thus is a lot less bright, and more unattractive. This Chinese crystal runs about 1/3 the price of the Austrian crystal. If you held this Chinese crystal up next to Austrian crystal, you would immediately notice that it is cloudier and less bright than the Austrian.
However, when people sell Chinese crystal, they don’t hold it up next to Austrian crystal. They hold it up next to glass. It’s much prettier than glass. Plus, they are in the business of marketing and displaying Chinese crystal so it looks great at the point of sale. If asked, I usually tell people to think carefully before they buy this. At the point of sale, it’s cheap and it’s attractive. But when you take it home, you usually have nothing to mix it with. It’s too dull to mix with Austrian crystal; it’s too bright to mix with glass. However, if you are making fashion jewelry, the Chinese crystal might be the best choice. It is very inexpensive, but will definitely add that extra level of sparkle and brightness that people find so attractive. Moreover, the Chinese line has some interesting color effects and shapes that the Swarovski line does not.
Suppose you are very familiar with the realities of the crystal market. Say you are in the business of selling eyeglass leashes, and that you had been using Austrian crystals in your leash, and having to sell them for $20.00. You have a brainstorm. If you substitute Chinese crystals for Austrian crystals, you’ll be able to sell your eyeglass leashes for $10.00, and become a millionaire.
With this particular type of bead, this relationship based on cost doesn’t really play out. People really value that brightness, and are willing to pay for it. Say I had an eyeglass leash done with Chinese crystals at $10.00 side by side with one done with Austrian crystals at $20.00. I’d sell more at $20.00. Say I had my Chinese one alone. I wouldn’t sell that many more at $10.00, based on a cost projection, because people come to the situation with an expectation about brightness. People shop around. People go to Macy’s and look at tennis bracelets, and they go to Wal-Mart and look at tennis bracelets. Subconsciously, they see and know the difference, and they bring this understanding with them to any purchasing situation.
With Chinese crystal, you are definitely getting an inferior product. But how do you know what you’re buying? I’ve been in many bead stores, bead shows, on-line, and seen many people selling Other-Than-Austrian crystal, but having this labeled as Austrian.
SCAM #3: Selling You Grade “B” as Grade “A”
Crystal in the market can be sorted into two groupings, though they are rarely labeled as such. Grade “A” is perfect. Grade “B” may or may not have scratches and chips. This works like clothing and “irregulars.” Grade “B” comes from many sources. Stores that have these loose in a tray may be selling them out, and they’ve gotten bumped up and bruised in the trays. Some people cannibalize old jewelry. Distributors and manufacturers sell off cartons that have gotten roughed up somehow, through dropping cases, moving and the like.
These beads are so bright that it is difficult to examine them for scratches and chips over a sustained time without hurting your eyes. The only yellow flag that I can suggest is that, if you see these crystal beads getting sold on strands, I’d be more suspicious. When crystal beads come to a store, they come loose in an envelope. If you see them on strands, that means that someone had to pay someone to strand them.
A good reason to put them on strands is that they sell better on strands. But you can only do so many strands in an hour, so the price of these would reflect that extra effort.
Usually when I’ve seen grade B sold as grade A, they’ve been on strands. So I’d suggest examining the beads a little more closely, if you buy them on strands.
Scams Over Crystal Beads Are Easy To Get Away With
The reason so many businesses actively try to scam their customers on crystal beads, is that it’s easy to get away with. Customers are often in a frenzy to get beads which are always in short supply. There can be a lot of wheeling and dealing when distributors sell crystal beads, so often there is not a clear and strong relationship between the price and the cost of these beads. A small retail store may have an incredibly great price, and a national distributor might have an average price. Not all the distributors carry all the colors and all the sizes and all the shapes. Often, people, while on vacation, will see some color or shape at a local bead store, and assume they can find the same thing when they get back home. There are often notorious and seemingly unexplainable shortages of certain colors or shapes.
And Swarovski, in the 2000’s, began rebranding their crystal products as “Crystallized”, which only muddied the water more. You can’t trademark an adjective. What began happening is that many crystal producers and distributors around the world began re-naming themselves “Crystallized”-something. One Chinese company became “Chwarovski.” In January, 2010, Swarovski returned to “Swarovski”, dropping “crystallized.”
“No,” yells the white beader chick carefully stitching her beadwork to perfection.
But I’m not sure about that. I don’t think there’s racism with a capital “R”, but maybe some things with a little “r”.
Look around. Very, very, very few, virtually none, Black bead artists. Or Latino. Or Asian. Look at the major national instructors. We have Joyce Scott. Who else?
Look at the faces of the women and men who contribute articles to the various bead magazines. White, white, white.
Look at the complexion of the attendees at bead shows, or the customers, staff and owners of bead shops, or the members of the local bead societies. Or at the entrants to all our national and international contests sponsored by Land of Odds and The Center for Beadwork & Jewelry Arts — The Ugly Necklace Contest, All Dolled Up: Beaded Art Doll Competition or The Illustrative Beader: Beaded Tapestry Competition.
Does this mean, from a color palette sense, that beading is primarily monochromatic, with no color clash, contrast, coordination or complimentarity — mostly of interest to white folks, and not black, brown, or yellow? I have my doubts. I imagine everyone loves jewelry, and the same proportions of people within any cultural group probably like to make jewelry as much as any other group, as well.
One of my friends told me that in New York and New Jersey, there is a diversity of culture and complexion, and one that is very natural. But this diversity doesn’t extend across the country. Certainly not in Nashville, Tennessee.
And I always have wondered why some people called the Ndebele Stitch, the “Herringbone Stitch”. Is it the pronunciation of the word “Ndebele” that influenced the switch? Or something more sinister?
All this is sad. If all there was to Jewelry Design was following a set of instructions and mimicking someone else’s work, a concern about diversity would not be that important. You follow the steps. You get the job done. No socio-cultural issues influencing any of your choices.
But for people who design things, this isn’t the case. Design is about creative construction. Design is where you take ideas and you take emotions and you apply your hands. Segregating ideas weakens your own. Segregating ideas result in failed opportunities to interact with others who are not like yourself. Segregating ideas are failed opportunities to learn new designs. They are failed opportunities for manipulating design elements in ways you’ve never thought about.
As a designer, you want to have many and varied experiences all through life. These experiences influence your recognition of colors, your choices for linking beads and pieces to stringing materials, your ideas about styles and looks and lengths and fashions. You don’t want to close yourself off to any part of the world. If you did, you would short-change your creative spirit. That essence within you and from which your jewelry resonates.
Yes, I know, you often bead and make jewelry as a type of escape from the real world. A meditative, relaxing, no problemo means of production. But you can’t escape the real world entirely. And you shouldn’t want to.
Race issues aren’t new problems that suddenly appeared circa 2020. They have historical roots, and an unsettling lingering quality to them. The day I wrote this article, these were some of the headlines on the MSNBC.com website home-page:
“Interracial couple denied marriage license [in Louisiana]” “Appearance matters more for black CEO’s” “Breaking Barriers: US Minority Leaders”
I remember when I was in high school, there were only 7 other Jewish-Americans and only 1 other Chinese-American in the entire school. We were all called the N-word by our peers. They used the N-word because they didn’t know the K-word or the C-word. The N-word would do. It was uncomfortable and awkward to go to school, and I learned, at least while I was in high school, to see an anti-Semite under every rock, whether there was one or not.
I can remember, also, and this was decades ago, when I was young and in junior high and high school, that my dad had to manage racial issues on a different level. It wasn’t discrimination against him. It was he discriminating against others — a perhaps necessary discrimination, from a business standpoint.
My dad owned a small pharmacy in a very small town called Raritan, New Jersey. Raritan was inhabited mostly by old world Italians, and was very insular. There were no black people in town. The people in town wouldn’t allow it. I remember once that a black family had bought a house there. A week later, before this family had moved in, it was suspiciously burnt to the ground. No one knew who did this, and everyone knew who did this. This family did not rebuild.
My father was not racist. Yet he would never hire a black person as a clerk or as a delivery driver. A black clerk, he feared, would keep his customers away. And a black driver, he feared, would be shot dead.
All these tensions in the air did not mean that we had no black customers. In fact, we had many black customers. They boarded the bus — during the day, not at night — and traveled the 2 miles from the next town over — Somerville. There were two drugstores in Somerville at the time. Blacks perceived that they were discriminated against at these stores, and not at ours. As I said, my father was not a racist.
Similar issues still arise. And while not as emotionally charged as when I was young, they’re still a bit emotionally charged. Owning the bead store means I can’t run and hide and bury myself. I have to deal with uncomfortable situations involving race. And I do.
It wasn’t until around 2009–22 years after starting this business — that we seemed to have some regular, repeat customers who were black, and Latino, and Asian. But still very few. Definitely not enough. I can’t imagine that there are not many, many more minority beaders and jewelry makers in town.
Each time we advertise to fill a staff position, we try to go out of our way to attract qualified minority applicants. We talk to our minority customers. We contact newspapers and agencies that target various minority communities. We contact the state’s Job Service. We get very few minority applicants, and fewer qualified ones. We pay well. The job is very interesting and rarely boring. While I’ve offered jobs to minority applicants, I’ve never had a taker. Whether I project this onto the situation, or it’s real, I get a sense of ill-ease, some risk, some discomfort.
Minority customers seem to self-select where they shop, where they look for jobs, and where they take classes. They seem to go to the large craft stores and discount stores, rather than the small bead and craft shops. This is understandable. As a minority, you are more likely to get discriminated against in a mom-and-pop shop in the South, than you are in a large corporate retail setting. You more likely have to deviate from the major roads or what are safe neighborhoods for you in order to visit these mom-and-pop shops. The odds are against you of getting hired in these small shops, because, just like with my dad, even if the owners are not racist, they have to be realists.
It doesn’t take much to make someone feel uncomfortable and ill-at-ease. Perceived slights are everywhere. Not getting asked if you need some help. A too-abrupt explanation of classes. A question which reveals that assumptions have been made about you, because of your ethnicity. Often an expected level of service rises and falls with the energy-level of the staff, or how pressured they have been during the day, or other things going on in their personal lives. It rarely rises and falls because of race. But it’s not always perceived or understood that way.
I had one minority student who tried to register for one of my advanced jewelry design classes — a class with 3 other prerequisites — and I turned her down. She was furious. She explained that she had taken all these other classes at other bead stores. I told her that our classes are not the same as at other beads stores. They teach steps; we teach theory and applications. I asked her a couple of design-theory questions — things I cover in my other classes — and she was clueless. My first question is always “Do you know the difference between gold-filled and gold-plated?” Rarely does anyone know the answer, and she did not either. I explained to her that I make everyone start at the beginning of our curriculum, including experienced beaders and jewelry makers, because classes elsewhere are craft-oriented project classes, and our classes are skills-based and more academic. I told her she would be wasting her money starting with this advanced class. She took it to mean that, as a minority, I felt she was incapable of learning. I tried to reason with her, but to no avail. Lost a student, garnered more bad word of mouth, and felt I was not heard nor understood.
On another occasion, a minority customer walked into the store, and was not greeted by staff. She walked in at a moment where the staff member who would have greeted her, had gotten sick and was throwing up in the bathroom, two other staff working on internet orders had been dealing with a problem with a customer on the phone, and another staff was getting some inventory from the back room. She expected to be greeted. She assumed the lack of any attention — and she did not even have a staff member glance her way and smile — was because she was black. She complained vociferously to me. Barely stretching my voice over her anger, I explained in great detail what was happening around her. Eventually, she calmed down. She has remained a customer. But she could as easily have gone elsewhere. She did not have to complain to me, and in effect, challenge her first assumptions. But she did. And this was a subject I did not want to deal with — not at all. But glad we had that conversation.
People make assumptions about other people based on their race. This is an unfortunate, but rationale thing that people do. It can be both funny and tragic. Someone puts you into a box in terms of the types of beading or jewelry making they expect you to do, because of your skin color or the slant of your eyes. Someone assumes that your level of jewelry-making proficiency must be based on your cultural and social and biological history.
Time and again over the years, I’ve introduced minority students to one of our bead study groups or jewelry making classes. The groups and classes are very inviting. But how many times I’ve overheard them peppering the person with questions, assuming, for instance, a black person would automatically be interested in Zulu beadwork, tribal jewelry and motifs, or African Trade Beads. And they’re not. Or that an Asian student would only be interested in bead weaving or pearl knotting, and only with Japanese seed beads or Japanese pearls. And they’re not. Or that a Latino student would prefer to use very bright colors. When they’re not. And they get asked all these questions which re-emphasizes that they are not necessarily among friends. And they don’t come back.
While these occurrences are the exception, rather than the rule, they happen often enough to make you think about the relationship of beads to race, beading to race, and bead stores to race. We don’t want to contribute to a hostile environment, even if this sense of hostility is very slight, often unintended. We want to contribute to a free flowing and overflowing multitudinous outpouring of ideas.
The beader’s job is not to solve the problems of the world. But in a quest for good design, the beader has to let some of the world in — problems and all.
For many people, jewelry design is a career choice that comes later in life. You work hard, continually frustrated or disappointed or unsatisfied in your current job. And you reach a point where you want to find something — a job or hobby or avocation — that makes you happy. That gives you a personal sense of satisfaction and accomplishment. You want to make a change.
That’s what happened to me.
I had been in the health care field for over 25 years. I never really liked health care as a field, but it paid a lot, it was a big source of status and power for me, and I did very well. I reached a point where I was near the top of my field, and no longer could push myself to take the next step.
Money had been one of my prime motivators. But that was less important to me now. I had traveled a lot, had lots of stuff and collectibles, a $10,000 wardrobe of the finest clothes and shoes. Except for the travel, I didn’t care about much of these things anymore.
Proving myself to myself had been another motivator. And I had proved myself to myself. I had accomplished some Herculean tasks and projects, under difficult conditions, with good and not so good people. And, though I hate to say it, I didn’t care about promoting health care and health care access anymore. I had done my part thoroughly and thoroughly well. It was time for someone else to take over these reigns.
I was at the top of my field, and social relationships equated with work relationships. I didn’t have friends outside of work. Many “friendships” were shallow in that they involved the machiavellian maneuverings you have to do when involved with work. My staff were not particularly honest and forthright with me, unnecessarily fearing for their jobs, if they were. And while I was surrounded by people every day, and I talked with people every day, and I played and worked with people every day, I felt very alone and lonely. My social connections were shallow or political or discolored by events. A few years earlier it was fun and challenging to manipulate these relationships. But now I yearned for something more real, more personal.
My life was going to continue to wither on the vine if I didn’t do something more drastic. I had to stop my world, and step off.
I had grown up in retail. My parents owned a pharmacy. They put me to work when I was 11 years old. I did so well, that they never put my younger brother or sister to work. [Still a psychological issue for me, though this is for another story…..]
When I graduated college, I looked for a non-retail pathway, because the money potential wasn’t there, and the social status potential wasn’t there, the hours were terrible, and the stresses that come with the monthly ups and downs in business were unpleasant.
Yet “retail” was in my blood. I always envisioned having a little retail store on the side. And when I was ready to make my change in careers, it was retail to which I jumped.
It wasn’t one big jump. Rather it was a managed transition over a period of two years. I made deliberate decisions. I pretested each of my ideas. I assembled the funds I needed to get started. And I started small.
The retail grew, had set-backs, grew again.
After a few years, I evolved from a passion for selling jewelry to one for making it. A lot of things were trial and error, but gradually I began to define a philosophy of design and build upon some great ideas.
I’m very happy to make a living in the creative arts. And to have some of my income and success flow from my designs for jewelry.
I have to admit that my family and friends were horrified at my decision. The saw it as a come-down. Loss of prestige. A failure.
But that is not what it felt like to me. I was happy, motivated, and reconnected to the world.
It’s less money. Less status. Less opportunity to travel. But every day, I wake up and go to work at something I love.
Some final words of wisdom:
1) Be purpose driven.
2) Surround yourself with other creative people who can be supportive of you as a person and as a designer
3) Be a continual learner. Styles, techniques, technologies and materials constantly change. As do fashions and tastes. And there are always new jewelry designers to admire and gain insights from.
4) Always set aside some time each day for reflection and self-care
Lampworking. The major way of making glass beads by hand is called “Lampworking.” It’s not the only way to make beads by hand, but it’s the major way. It’s called “Lampworking” because these beads were originally made over lamp flames. Another name for this is called “wound glass”, because you are winding glass around a steel rod, using the flame to soften the glass.
In lampworking, the bead artist sits at a workbench. A torch is centered in front of him or her, with a flame shooting out away from him/her. The lampwork artist takes a steel rod called a “mandrel”, and turns the mandrel between the thumb and forefinger of each hand, each hand on either end of the mandrel. The flame is shooting out over the middle of this steel rod. The thickness of this rod becomes the thickness of the hole of the bead.
Around the artist are many glass rods, each a different color. The artist usually starts with a clear rod. S/he puts the tip of the clear rod in the flame, and melts the glass onto the mandrel. Now if the artist takes the mandrel too far from the flame, or stops turning the mandrel, the glass at this point is like water, and it would drop to the table. So basically the artist has to keep turning. It takes about 40 minutes to do a ¾’ to 1” bead with some decoration on it
The artist keeps on layering the glass on the mandrel while turning it between thumbs and forefingers on either end. S/he’ll stop for a few seconds. Then the artist might take a blue rod, and melt a dot of blue onto the glass. And then keep turning. Briefly stop again. The artist will take what looks like a dental tool, and pull at the blue dot, then keep turning. This is called raking. Then he’ll stop a few more seconds, and rake some more. This is how you begin to do a pattern or a picture. The artist might also lay some shards or stringers of glass for decoration and let these melt into the developing glass bead.
Then, when the bead is built up the way the artist wants, s/he takes the mandrel with the hot bead on it, and puts this all into a hot kiln, and lets it cool, usually overnight. It’s critical in lampworking that the outside of the bead, and the inside of the bead, cool down at the same rate. This is called annealing. If it doesn’t cool down at the same rate, the bead will fracture. If the bead fractures, it means the bead will break. It may break in the kiln. It may break when you take it out. It may take a week. It may take a month. It may take a year before it will break, but it will break.
In my shop, I carry lampwork beads from many countries, including India, China, Indonesia, Venice, the Czech Republic and the United States. In lampworking price-wise, you can get low-end (inexpensive) or high-end (expensive), but no in-between. Either the bead has been annealed (cooled down) correctly and will not break, or it hasn’t and it will.
As a designer, this creates some hard choices for you. In India, they don’t worry about the cooling down process, and there are a few other craftsmanship issues, so all their beads will eventually break. Most of the India lampwork glass are copies of famous Venetian lampwork beads. Venice is top of the line for lampworking.
One raised flower rose bead with aventurine detail, and about 1” in diameter, might be $2.00 retail for the India “imitation” bead, and $20.00 retail for the Venetian original. If a person wants a necklace with a hand-made look, and is only going to wear that piece occasionally over the next year or two, then the India bead will be fine. If someone wants a more investment quality piece, then most people can’t afford a whole necklace of quality lampwork beads. You would be looking at a $600–800.00 necklace. So, often, with top quality lampwork beads, you might use just one, or say three beads, and either have a lot of cord showing, or use a lot of spacer beads. A very different design aesthetic.
One of my students had lived in Venice for a long time. She said that a lot of what you see in the souvenir stores there that is labeled “Venetian” is actually from India. There’s a real easy test. If I took the bead from India and dropped it on the floor, it would break. If I took the bead from Venice and dropped it on the floor, it may or may not chip. Great test!
One more point here. Also on the low-end are lampwork beads from Indonesia, China and Taiwan. What I like about these lampwork beads is that they copy more American styles, rather than the old-world Venetian styles of the India glass. But remember, lampworking in these countries also have similar craftsmanship issues of cooling down and the like. These beads also chip and break easily.
Not all beads are alike. When you see them in a store or a catalog or online, they might look the same in appearance. But appearances are deceiving. There are underlying quality differences which can be very wide indeed. Such differences will have a big impact, sometimes negative, on the success of your pieces.
Beads are made in many countries around the world, but few are made in the United States. Making beads is a difficult task. Bead-making is often done by workers who are exploited in some way, and this is a reality of the craft. Knowing what country the beads were manufactured in tells you a lot about their quality and usefulness. In fact, country-of-origin is your best indicator of quality.
[NOTE: Increased Globalization these days tends to blur geographical boundaries. What’s labeled “Made in Germany” might actually be manufactured in Pakistan. Austrian Crystal and Murano Glass might originate in China. Bali Silver might begin its creation in India or Turkey. Yet we still associate our understanding of “quality” by the country label stamped on the beads packaging, where we assume, that the primary “country” on the label of the product maintains its sense of quality standards, no matter where the product has actually been produced. So crystal labeled “Made in Austria”, which may have actually been manufactured in China, would have the higher qualities associated with Austria; whereas, crystal labeled “Made in China” and manufactured in China would have the lower qualities associated with China.
The journey of a glass bead might transverse 5 or 6 countries before it ended up on the retail shelf. One country might make a core bead. It may go to another country to do some shaping. Still another country to do some finishing. Yet another country for some coloration. And yet one more country to apply a special coloration effect. And, yes, still yet another country to get packaged up as retail-ready.]
Not all beads are useful for all projects. Beads come in all levels of quality and sophistication. Knowing which beads to select for your project, — whether you want to bead a professional jewelry designer, or not is a key skill every beader and jewelry maker needs to learn.
In this module, I’m going to focus on glass beads, and try to give you a sense of what “quality” means. My descriptions are broad generalizations, but will give you a good grounding in quality issues and considerations.
Picture in your mind a strand of 8mm round glass beads. We will call these “large” beads, as opposed to the “small” seed beads we’ll cover later in another module. For our purposes here, it does not matter what color or finish these beads are, only that they are glass, are round, and that we’re looking at several of them that are supposed to be the same bead, typically on a strand.
These are 8mm, Round, Pressed Glass Beads
Look at the glass beads in the image above. They are machine made (pressed glass). I want to give you a sense of what quality means, when it comes to glass beads. I am going to pretend they are made in different countries to give you a sense of what quality means.
Our criteria: 1) perfection in shape 2) consistency in shape from bead to bead on a strand 3) hole sharpness or smoothness 4) hole size consistency from bead to bead on a strand 5) whether hole is drilled through the center or not 6) whether the color is in the glass, or applied to the surface of the glass using a coating, film or decal
CZECH GLASS: If these 8mm round glass beads had been made in The Czech Republic, we’d give them a grade of “B”. We would consider the price to be above average, by a good typical benchmark for quality jewelry.
NOTE: The “grade” and “price” refers to beads (and other components) for jewelry making purposes. The quality of the pieces you would use in making jewelry have to be of a much higher quality than those you would use to make something stationery, like a beaded Christmas ornament. All jewelry moves. This puts a tremendous amount of pressure and force on each component. So they have to be a higher quality. My reference in our discussions in on jewelry.
These 8mm round Czech glass beads would be considered “generally perfectly round.” They are not perfectly round, but close.
The beads on a strand from bead to bead are pretty much the same size and shape. They are not really the exact size and shape, just close.
The manufacturer produces thousands of beads, basically one at a time. At the point they are ready to get strung up as strands, they are piled in up into a huge pyramid on a table. Someone, usually a woman, sits there all day and eyeballs them and sorts them by quality. She separates the A-quality from the B-quality. B-quality beads may have some flat sides, the color may not fill the entire bead, the holes may have chips or other problems, the shape might be somewhat distorted. For the A-quality, she chooses which ones are similar enough to be included on the same strand, and the customer will think they are all exactly the same. This process of selection is less important for the B-quality beads.
The Czech beads have a good size hole. The holes from bead to bead on a strand are pretty much the same size. They are drilled through the center.
These holes would be called “generally smooth”. This is a marketing term. The hole of a bead is not very smooth. Instead it looks like a broken soda bottle. If I took a soda bottle and smashed it on the edge of a table, this resulting jagged rim would be what the hole looked like — rough, jagged edges, potential to cut your stringing material. Because you cannot see this roughness with your naked eye, marketers can get away with calling these holes “generally smooth”. However, you always have to worry about the holes of your beads cutting your stringing materials.
One last point. The Czechs use colored glass, so if the bead scratched or chipped, it would be the same color on the inside.
JAPANESE GLASS: If these 8mm round beads had been made in Japan, we’d give them a grade of “A”. The Japanese beads would cost about 3–5 times that of the Czech beads.
These beads would be “generally perfectly round”. They would not be perfectly round, but would be rounder than the Czech beads.
The beads on a strand would be very similar in size and shape, though not exactly the same size and shape.
These would have good hole sizes, and the hole sizes would be consistent from bead to bead on the strand.
These holes would be called “smooth”, and you would primarily be paying for a smoother hole. Note how I say smoother, not smooth. They would be drilled through the center.
The Japanese also use colored glass, so if your bead scratched or chipped, it would be the same color on the inside.
CHINESE GLASS: These round 8mm glass beads could also have been made in China. We would give these beads a “D” or an “F”. They would be 1/3 or less in cost than the Czech beads.
These beads would be “generally perfectly round”.
The hole sizes would be a good size hole and consistent along the strand from bead to bead.
We would call these holes “generally smooth”, meaning they look like a broken coke bottle. The holes would be a little rougher than the Czech beads.
Usually the hole is drilled through the center, but sometimes you’ll find that the hole is a little off-center. If off-center, this means the bead will more easily break when worn. It also means that the beads on a strand will not line up perfectly, which can be annoying.
The problem with the Chinese beads is that they tend to use clear beads and colored coatings. The coatings are very poorly applied. The coatings will chip off, and your beads will all-too-quickly look like chipped nail polish.
[Since 2005, the Czechs have gotten very much into coatings, as well. Their finishes seem more reliable, but will still have the issues of chipping off the core bead. But the coating technology keeps improving. For the Czechs, this has opened up great possibilities in color combinations and effects. The Czechs use their coated beads to supplement and complement their regular line of beads. ]
[NOTE, parenthetically: The best gemstone beads come from China. China gets A+ for gemstones. Their higher quality gemstone beads tend to be higher priced than gemstone beads from other countries. While India is catching up in quality and selection, they still have a ways to go. What I tend to like about the Chinese gemstone beads is that they are more careful in how they drill the holes. They know how to avoid the fracture lines in the stone, so that when finished jewelry is subjected to all the forces of movement and wear, they hold up well, and don’t break. Chinese beads have clean holes, and rarely have any cracks or wear at the hole. Chinese beads, when treated with dyes, heat, radiation, polishes and the like, seem more durable, and less affected by sunlight, water, detergents and general wear, than similarly treated ones from other countries. I usually try to avoid the beads from India, particularly the treated ones, but they are a lot less expensive. ]
INDIA GLASS: As a last example, we can picture these same 8mm round beads beads as if they were made in India. Here, we would give these beads an “F minus minus minus minus”. These beads would be a fraction of the cost of the Czech beads.
These beads would not be perfectly round.
Some holes would be OK, some too small, some too large.
Some holes would be drilled centered. Some off centered. Some somewhat at a diagonal.
These holes would be called “rough”. They can’t get away with marketing because your eye can see how rough these are.
While the Indians are beginning to adapt some of the Chinese production techniques, such as colored coatings and decals, to keep their costs down, for the most part today, you can assume that they have used colored glass, so if their beads scratched or chipped, they would be the same color on the inside.
So Many Beads, So Little Time, Which Ones Do I Choose?
This does NOT mean that you never use beads from India and China and only use beads from the Czech Republic or Japan. You always relate your choice of bead to what you’re trying to do — that is, your design goals, (and if you are selling things, to your marketing goals, as well).
For example, if you are making Fashion Jewelry, the Indian beads might be your best choice. This type of jewelry is often worn only once or twice and thrown away. Not only would the Indian beads be your best choice because they are cheap; their irregularities gives them a funky look, and this works hand in hand with Fashion jewelry. The Chinese beads would be OK because they are cheap, but there’s nothing funky about them. They look very machine made.
On the other extreme, if you were making an heirloom bracelet, and the person you made it for was going to wear it a lot, put it away, give it to their granddaughter or niece, and that person was not going to wear it, then the Czech beads might be your best choice. If the granddaughter or niece was, in fact, going to wear this heirloom bracelet, then, from a design stand-point, the Japanese beads might be your best choice.
From a marketing stand-point, however, if you were selling this piece, you might have to back down to the Czech beads. Say you presented your customer with a choice between a Czech-based heirloom bracelet and one Japanese-based bracelet, and the former might sell for $100 and the latter for $400. Four hundred dollars is a hard sell. To your customer, both bracelets would look exactly the same. The things that are different are either things they can’t see, or things that may not happen for 30 or 40 years.
So, in beading, nothing is perfect. At least should accept these facts: There is no perfect bead for every situation. No perfect clasp. No perfect stringing material. No perfect technique. Everything involves making choices and trade-offs and judgment calls. The more you understand the quality of the pieces you are using, and the clearer you are about your design goals (and if you’re selling your stuff, your marketing goals as well), the more prepared you’ll be to make these kinds of choices.
Yes, better prepared to make choices. That’s why you need an Orientation.
Making Beads By Machine
Pressed Glass. There are many ways to make glass beads by machine. The major way of making glass beads by machine is called “Pressed Glass” — basically molding them.
To oversimplify things, to make a round bead in pressed glass, you would fill two half cups with molten glass and then press them together. At the point they’ve been pressed together, this sometimes leaves a ridge, and sometimes a color change. While they are supposed to tumble the beads to smooth out the ridge, sometimes this ridge can be very pronounced. With the color change, sometimes this looks like a natural part of the bead; othertimes, it’s hideous.
The line down the center of the bead is where the two halves come together.
The Lesson here:Whenever you buy a strand of beads, you need to examine all the beads on the strand, to make sure you can live with what you’re buying. There will be production issues with some beads in any batch. You especially want to look at the equator or belly to be sure there are no ridges or hideous discolorations. You want to be sure there are no flat spots where none should be. That the shape of the bead is perfect and consistent from bead to bead on the strand. That the coloration is full and complete within each bead. And that the holes are drilled cleanly — that is, no chips around the holes of the beads, and that the holes have been drilled as a straight channel through the center.
The actual process of pressing glass into beads: The bead presser sits in front of a fiery kiln, with many rods of colored glass next to him. The tips of these rods are resting in the kiln, to make them soft. A die press (like two cookie cutters vertically hurling towards each other, then suddenly away again) is operating in front of the kiln, between the kiln and the bead presser. The bead presser grabs a rod, and moves the tip into the die press. The press stamps out the shape of a bead. Rods in the die press molds simultaneously create the hole. The presser continues to move the rod into the die press. Only a few beads can be pressed before the rod must be heated again. So the presser lays this rod next to him, with the tip in the kiln, and grabs another rod with a hot tip. The pressed glass cool as they slide into a holding container. The beads at this point are still connected to each other by the excess glass around the molded shape. The beads then get tumbled to break the beads apart from the rod. And they get tumbled again to smooth off the ridges. The quality of the beads relies mostly on the skill level of the master bead presser. These bead pressers vary widely in their craftsmanship.
Druks and Fire Polish Beads
I wanted to give you, at this point in our orientation pathway, a couple of terms for beads. The first is “Druk”. Druk means plain, smooth, roundish. Not necessarily just round. Roundish. You can have a round Druk, a Druk rondelle, an egg-shaped Druk. If you’re looking for a Plain Jane kind of glass bead, usually the word Druk will get you the furthest.
The opposite of Druk is called “Fire Polish”. Fire Polish beads have at least one slice or facet on it. Fire Polish beads start as smooth round beads and facets are grinded into them in a faceting machine. The faceted surfaces and edges can be splintery and sharp. So before these glass beads can be used, these surfaces and edges need to be smoothed out. One way this is done is to run the bead back and forth in a flame or a very hot oven so the surfaces melt, thus “fire-polishing”.
So you can have a round Fire Polish bead. A teardrop Fire Polish bead. A 5-sided Fire Polish bead. An 8-sided Fire Polish bead. A Fire Polish rondelle. If you’re looking for a faceted, dressier look, then usually the words “Fire Polish” will get you the furthest.
THE AB- AND OTHER COLORATION EFFECTS
Now on some beads, there is a special coloration finish called an “Effect”. The most common is an AB effect. AB stands for Aurora Borealis. The AB effect looks like a rainbow or oil slick. This effect appears on just one side of the bead — it doesn’t go all the way around.
There are many ways to make this effect on the glass, and the technology is always changing and evolving — mostly to keep the costs down. Typically on glass beads, a chemical is applied to one side of the bead, and then the bead is subjected to some source of heat and pressure. The chemical explodes on the glass, adheres to the glass, and creates a certain coloration. The effect is typically “fired” on the bead; it is not typically a coating. The fired finish is more durable. There are about 40 different coloration effects — such as celsian, azuro, zairit, valentinit, clarit, vega, ½ silver (cal), ½ gold (Apollo), ½ copper, among others — , and new ones invented frequently. But most often, all you see is the AB effect.
Now, they do create this where it goes all the way around the glass. To go all the way around the glass, they have to repeat the production process twice. When the effect goes all the way around the glass, the color is called AB AB or FULL AB.
If we are talking about color names, the color name for black is “jet.” With no effect the color would be called “jet.” With the effect on one side, “jet AB.” With the effect all the way around, “jet AB AB.” [On crystal beads, the shortform color name would be “jet 2X.”]
Over time, this AB effect will begin to scratch and eventually wear off. On most quality beads, this usually takes a very long time. Occasionally this happens more quickly than you would like. If this is critical to you and your piece, you’ll want to experiment with your beads before you use them. Take one bead and see how easy it is to scratch off with your fingernail. On some Chinese beads, I think they spray it on, because I can literally flick it off with my thumb nail.
Sometimes the word “Rainbow” is used to denote the AB effect. Sometimes this word is used to denote a similar but different effect called “iris”.
DRUKS AND FIRE POLISH BEADS ARE MEASURED IN MILLIMETERS
Druks and Fire Polish beads are measured in “millimeters”. Typically, these are available in 2mm, 3mm, 4mm, 6mm, 8mm, 10mm, and 12mm. Less common are 5mm, 7mm, 9mm and sizes larger than 12mm.
Rulers are marked in inches on one side and millimeters on the other. There are 25mm in an inch. Thus 6mm would be approximately 1/4 inches (25 divided by 6).
One of the first times I noticed that some people were treated differently than others had to do with Miss Divinity Daughtry — an heiress. I was in elementary school at the time. Miss Daughtry had an estate across the Raritan River from my Dad’s pharmacy. She had been in our store a couple of times, but mostly she stayed on the estate.
She had just killed — that is, allegedly, just killed — another boy friend. In the same way as the first. Car accident. Hit the wrong pedal, or gas pedal stuck, something like that. Man dead. She walked away without a scratch. Poor thing. Bored with her man. Disposed of the best way she knew how — allegedly.
Her estate was very large. She had given some of it over to local communities to use as a park. I spent many-a-day at Island Park — hiking, swimming at the dam, playing on the swings, picnicking. Beautiful park. They held the July 4th fire works there. The land was flat and wooded — flood plain. The ponds attracted many ducks and geese. People loved that park. Though they didn’t necessarily love Miss Daughtry. Few knew her, but all knew of her.
The local police never arrested Miss Daughtry or charged her with a crime. Accident, they said. Convenient accident, everyone else said. No investigation, no trial, no examination of the car. The accidents both took place on Miss Daughtry’s estate. On her driveways. Fast enough to kill the passengers, but not the driver. In the same way. Almost in the same spot. An act of God. An act with God’s blessing. Poor little rich girl. If there’s a boy friend of yours you’d like to get rid of, you might want to try this at your home, and see if it works for you.
It was clear to all that money bought extra understanding, a bigger dose of empathy, a larger amount of believability, more room for magnanimity, and a two-faced measure of justice. Like the drama masks, a tragedy if you looked at the situation from one angle, and a comedy, if you looked at it from another. The rules, the culture, the daily behaviors of life — all work differently for different folks for different measures of wealth.
Whether you’re a Dodge or a Helmsley, leaving $100 million or $50 million to your dog, when you pass away, there’s a certain disconnect you often find based on class and income. What’s important to one class, is not to the other. What are appropriate behaviors to one class, are not to the other. What are measures of success to one class, are not necessarily understood in the same way by the other, or are not necessarily achievable in one generation. Economic classes can be very distinct, and each class creates many social and linguistic behaviors which serve to maintain these distinctions.
So, when Miss Daughtry, again, for the third time, yes, Third Time, had a car accident, while she was driving, with her new boy-friend as a passenger in the car, on her estate, as before, near the same spot, she was again not questioned by the police, or had her car examined. In fact, she left New Jersey to spend time on another one of her estates, I think in Hawaii. Her boy friend was hurt, but not critically so. Miss Daughtry, this time, suffered a fractured bone in her leg. Her driving skills were obviously declining with age. They should at least have forced her to give up her drivers license.
Miss Daughtry died at 81 years of age. One day, she collapsed on the floor, gasping for breath. Her butler watched her choke on food or medicine and did not call for help. She passed away. He was obviously ready to receive her fortune — all of it which she left to him. Although he was eventually put on trial for murder, the jury found him innocent. This was as they should have. When someone rich mistakes the money-grubbing of a butler for loyalty and devotion, society has no other choice, though this innocence is not necessarily as the rich of society would see it. Her obituary told of all her philanthropic works. I remembered her in a different way.
As far as I know, Miss Daughtry didn’t bead or make jewelry or any crafts. Her main hobbies were sexual exploits and mystical explorations. But had she beaded, she would have found beading, as a hobby, to be very expensive, and as a social endeavor, to raise many interesting societal questions related to income and class. Beading, with its upstairs/downstairs implications, mystical and sexual connotations, the potential dangers and thrilling possibilities that come with needle, and scissors, and torch, might have been something she may have enjoyed.
While beading attracts people of all income classes, often there are funny, and not-so-funny, “Upstairs/Downstairs” qualities where beadwork and jewelry are made, where beads and jewelry are bought, and where beads and jewelry are sold. You might assume that this doesn’t concern jewelry makers, but it does. You bead and make jewelry in a social context, and Upstairs/Downstairs tensions are very much among the kinds of things you must manage, to be successful.
So when Nancy, who is middle class, was riding in a car with Letitia, who is upper class, on their way to a beading workshop in the mountains, Letitia complained and complained about having less money, now that her husband was retired. She had to edit down her European tour, cutting out 3 days and 4 countries. She had to change landscaping companies for a less expensive one. Her husband wanted to sit down and come up with a weekly budget. Which meant she’d have to cut back her spending on beads — running about $150–200.00 each week. She’d probably have to cut this down to about $100.00 per week.
Nancy was counting down the minutes — minute by minute — hoping their trip would end soon. Nancy’s husband recently lost his job. Her family was overextended financially. And she probably spent less than $100.00 a month on beads. All Letitia’s talk was making Nancy feel more and more uncomfortable. Nancy was ready to push Letitia out the window. “How will I survive the drive back?” Nancy thought to herself. They stopped to get gas, and Letitia asked Nancy if she wanted to split the cost of a soda.
Crissa points to a staff member at the shop. “Hey, you,” Crissa shouts, then snaps her fingers. “Over here,” she orders. “Get these trays out for me,” she continues. I witness part of this, but it isn’t the first time. I don’t think anyone on my staff likes to be finger-snapped at. All too often, some customers treat staff as servants. They aren’t servants. They don’t want to be. It’s very difficult to maintain a sense of dignity if people treat you that way.
And staff do respond passive-aggressively. “Here?” they say, pointing to trays not even close where to Crissa was looking. “Here?” again feigning interest and concern. When they arrive at the correct trays, they take them out one-by-one, very slowly. They don’t open up the lids. They take their time writing down what Crissa selects. And play as dumb and dumb-founded as they can. They will make Crissa wait and struggle and get frustrated. And delight in this.
Ernesta was another customer who was very haughty with staff. Her husband had been a special American ambassador to Japan. They had spent 15 years living a life of privilege in Japan. When they returned home, she picked up beading as a hobby to fill her time. She missed the people, the parties, the conversations she had had routinely in Japan. Nothing similar was to be had in Nashville, particularly since her husband had now retired. Beading would fill the void.
She came in weekly and, each time, spent hundreds of dollars on beads. She finger-snapped at staff. She asked questions which clearly showed her superiority, and staff inferiority. It came to a point where no one on staff wanted to wait on her. When she entered the shop, everyone found a place to busy themselves and hide. Several years later, her husband died. He left her nothing in his will. Nothing. She had little money of her own. But she had accumulated a bead stash worth thousands of dollars. One day she came into the store, and quietly, meekly, with pleading in her voice, she asked if she could bring back the beads a little at a time for money. Without hesitation, I said she could. But it’s unbelievably awkward each time she comes in. The thoughts going through my head, and what I imagine the thoughts going through her head — a lot to contemplate.
Neva loves to bead. She spends most of her time each week beading. She beads while she does the laundry. She beads while she prepares dinner for her husband and three children. She beads incessantly. Her husband works full-time some weeks and part-time in others. When he works, he gets some decent pay, but it’s never steady, and never enough. Neva works part time as a store clerk to support her beading habit. But she also has supported her beading habit with over $20,000 of credit card debt.
Beading and jewelry making are Neva’s ticket out of poverty. It’s a fantasy ticket to a fantasy island with fantasy riches. But at the same time, she gets to socialize with women who are upper class, who take the classes she takes and joins the bead society she belongs to and attends the same bead shows she does. She visits their homes for beading sessions, or meetings, or special dinners. She travels with them. She meets their friends. She shares their stories, their experiences, their excitement that only money can buy. Occasionally they buy her gifts, or give her hand-me-downs, which in Neva’s hands, are prize possessions. She gets to sell some of her jewelry at prices she could never afford herself. She feels she’s among friends. Among equals.
Sally lives in the wealthiest neighborhood in town. It’s not a stretch for her and her husband. It’s a place they feel they belong, and can easily afford. Sally discovered that she liked to design and sell jewelry. Marketing to her friends, however, has proven a challenge. First, she has to explain to them that, yes, you can make a piece a jewelry. A finished piece doesn’t magically appear that way on a store shelf. Then, she has to explain what “make” means. They assume that “make” means you fly to New York and buy it. Then she tackles the meaning of “design”. “Is that something that you can do?” they ask, implying that really no one makes jewelry, except a few designers whose names they can remember. And she dare not come across as if she has to make jewelry to bring in extra money. While money is not her motivator here, she has to subtly convey to others that she makes and sells for fun, not because she needs to.
Her potential customers in her neighborhood want jewelry. They just can’t make the connection between Sally, designing/making jewelry, and how a piece of jewelry would end up coming to them. Talk about hard sell! And Sally, bless her heart, when someone agrees to let her design something for them, she feels she needs to follow through, no matter what the request. Getting these people to make a request is so fraught with complications of life and meanings, she dare not say No! Even when many requests are unreal. Of course, they would be. Otherwise, they would just fly to New York and pick up what they need.
One woman asked Sally to make something that she could wear, when accepting an award for her horsewomanship. The jewelry had to match the horse’s colors — apparently, show horses have assigned colors — which she described as the pink-rose color in a famous rose given to Queen Elizabeth, the navy blue of an insignia at the local Club, and white. She wanted the necklace to look rich and elegant, and complement both she and her horse. Aside from the fact that making something that is pink and navy and white is difficult, especially if you want it to be rich-looking, we had to find that pink-rose color, and match it with beads.
Google IMAGES came in very handy. We found the Queen and her rose and matching beads. We used blue goldstone for the navy, minimized the white, and brainstormed a great design. Sally was not only making a necklace to go with a dress. She had to learn a lot about horses, horse colors, horse awards, and what kinds of statements her client wanted to make, when wearing the piece.
“Do you carry plastic?” People inquire over and over again. “No,” we say, “There’s a Michael’s craft store across the street. They carry plastic.” I don’t personally want to carry plastic beads. Yet, everytime I say No and Michael’s across the street, I feel a twinge of class consciousness.
Often a customer will say something like, “Are you familiar with the clothing line — ‘Lily’?” And may continue with a related comment like, “Is your dog Lily named after this clothing line?” I sometimes wonder why they would ask such questions? Is she trying to establish that she is somehow above everyone who has never heard of the line? Is she more superior because she is familiar with the line, and others are not? Does the line, and its brand name, relate in anyway to the types of jewelry she intends or make, or the particular beads and findings she wants to buy? Does she think she deserves special attention or more attention, because somehow she is more “in” than “out” than the staff and other customers around her?
Or you will hear the questions, “Are you going to Bead & Button?” or “Are you going to Tucson?”, or “Are you going to take that class with So-and-So?” Each trip involves a great expense, a big time commitment, and shows that the “go-er” has big bucks to spend on beads and related materials, or instruction. And the answer “No,” to each question shows that the “not-go-er” can’t afford the expense, doesn’t have that kind of time, nor does she have a lot of extra cash on hand to spend on things or instruction. The responses to these questions range from, “I have too many beads in my stash already,” or, “I have to work,” or “I can’t afford it right now,” or “I’ve bought her book”. And one person feels superior, and the other inferior.
Class distinctions, even class warfare, is not an acceptable topic of conversation in America. It makes people feel uncomfortable. They feel such discussion is dangerous and divisive. They feel that any beader and jewelry designer, if their work is great, the doors will open. They don’t want to see how class status offers advantages, or even disadvantages. They think that design is design is design, no matter what the income and class situations.
Rather than pretend that class distinctions have very little impact on beading and jewelry making, the good designer should be sensitive to impacts of class, and how to leverage this understanding in the jewelry design process, as well as the business promotion process.
A Revealing Tax Cut
I remember in the early 2000’s, President Bush convinced Congress to pass a massive tax cut. The taxes of the top 10% of the population accounted for 90% of the total tax cut amount. Very Republican. Republicans believe in “trickle-down” economics, and this was the first time in my life that I truly witnessed and slowly experienced a totally trickle-down policy.
Now, as I wrote before, Beading is an expensive hobby. Our customer base is definitely skewed to the up-scale, but we serve people of all economic backgrounds. Before these massive tax cuts, the economy had been faltering. Severely. People were scared. They were cutting back a lot.
In the bead store, we experienced this in a strange way. The first thing we noticed is that our Saturday business dropped to near nothing. Saturdays overall are the busiest days of the week. We serve three or more times as many customers, and usually have the strongest or second strongest dollar-day of the week, on Saturdays. So, what was happening on Saturdays was very surprising and very disturbing.
The next thing that began to waver was our late afternoon business during the week. We would always have a rush after 3pm and through closing each day. Now it was very quiet during the week-day afternoons. And getting more disturbing.
This left us living on the weekday morning business. And we had been living on this for about a year. Before President Bush’s tax cut, this weekday morning business was beginning to weaken, as well. God, how disturbing can things get?
I was forced to cut out the equivalent of 1.5 F.T.E’s — one and a half (thus 60 work hours) full time equivalents, which meant three staff were either out of a job, or had fewer hours. Over the year, I reduced our inventory by over $10,000. I let a lot of things not get done, like the cleaning of our floors, or the replacement of broken light fixtures.
Our usual daily ebbs and flows were breaking down. In the mornings during the week, our wealthiest customers were disappearing. In the late afternoons during the week, our customers on their way home from work passed us by. And on Saturdays, our mix of customers, people who don’t work or don’t make a lot of money, were no where to be seen.
Then came the tax cut. And Trickle-Down Economics. Within weeks, weekday mornings started to get very busy. It took several months, but all of a sudden, our weekday afternoon business started to kick in again. And after about a year and a few months, Saturdays slowly got stronger, and began justifying what I had to pay our Saturday staff.
But Saturday business never returned to its heights for many, many years.
The tax-cut moneys never could quite trickle down to everyone on the bottom.
Like the Colorado River.
On the map, it reaches the Gulf of California.
In real life, it rarely does. The river beds goes all the way to the Gulf. The water often doesn’t. Residents and towns and farmers use up more water than the river carries, and it often doesn’t reach the sea.
The economy, the tax cuts, trickle down, the impacts and effects — — these all made sharper the class distinctions among our customers.
The upstairs/downstairs dynamic shows itself over and over again in the bead business. Think about Jewelry. People wear jewelry to show wealth, status, importance. People get competitive with jewelry — Who wears more, nicer, pricier? Who sells more? To whom? Which stores, located in which parts of town, show-case your jewelry?
People in different income groups shop at different times. Not often crossing paths. They shop for different kinds of products. They make different kinds of projects. They treat staff differently. And they treat each other differently.
Dressing For Success
I was shopping in Green Hills the other day, one of the better parts of town, and dropped off some packages at the local post office branch. I was standing in line, waiting my turn, and noticed how so many of the women, also in line, dressed in a similar way. And I began trying to analyze and categorize all this — it’s so boring to have to stand in line waiting, waiting, waiting. What better thing to do?
And I came up with the idea that richer people, when they dress, emphasize the horizontal. And, with further thought, I began to visualize how working class people, in contrast, when they dress, emphasize the vertical. Classes operate and dress themselves on different planes. Whether this is learned or genetic or any kind of universal mathematical fact, I don’t really know. But look around you.
Perhaps I’m wrong, but it seems to me that wealthier people wear boxier cloths. They emphasize the shoulder-to-shoulder, and de-emphasize their breasts. Their pants line up with the lines going hip-to-hip, and de-emphasize as much as possible, the crack-to-crotch. Shoulders are puffy or padded. If big hair, it’s some variation of left-to-right or side-to-side, like that of Princess Laia and her “ear-muffs”. And if not, it is straight and close to the head. The necklace contour line is a gradual curve, from side to side, as it moves around the neck. The whole profile is as if they were presenting a door for you to knock on. Doors seem all-too-alike, plain, flat, and do not unduly call for your attention. Unthreatening. Accommodating. Asexual.
The whole profile of working class people, on the other hand, and I hope I’m not stretching the metaphors too far for everyone — humor me — is like a sharp knife coming right out at you. The breasts are pointy and pulled together. Hair long and narrow — pony tail, mullet, or Mohawk. The necklace contour line forms a “V”, often long, with large focal point. Pants tight and creased. Pants draw your eye to a tight upside down “V” from waste to either ankle. Sharp. Aggressive. Sexy.
It’s like staring down at a compass. If you were looking straight down onto the compass, that class of people who shower before work would take up the great East-West plane. On the other hand, that class of people who shower after work would run up and down the sharp vertical line running from North to South. Each class would reinforce their compass positions through style choices about clothes, jewelry, hair-style, and accessories.
There’s definitely a different body form emphasis in the way each social class dresses. You see it in the construction of the clothes. You see it in the use of point, line, shape and silhouette in the jewelry. So, it should come as no surprise that class consciousness, even class wars, should enter your local bead store or society.
Luckily for us, class distinctions in America are as much behavioral as economic. You can dress-up as-if, and dress-up anyone else, to fit in. You just have to pick up the subtle clues which show the boundaries between one class and another. That Great Chain of Social Being, connecting the low with the high and the lowly with the sophisticated in America, is not person-specific. It’s situational specific.
Income Class Competition
I have to listen to this several times a week.
“Why is she so successful?” “Her stuff is Ugly!” “Cheaply made.” “She doesn’t even make it herself. She hires people to make it.” “How did she get into that trunk show?” “She buys all these things, and has all these things manufactured for her, and she doesn’t charge a full price!”
The “She” here is always someone very wealthy, has access to the “right” and “better” people in town, and probably owns a business and sells jewelry as much for status, as for making money. The title of “designer”, the fact of “owner”, and the visibility of the jewelry design business have as much currency for her (or her or her or her) as making a real profit, or creating truly well-designed and appealing pieces.
And my employee bemoans the fact that she works very hard at creating jewelry, but doesn’t get ahead. Her jewelry is prettier and better made. But everyone seems to want to buy “the other Her’s” jewelry. Her jewelry is for sale in several stores throughout town, but not the best stores as “the other Her’s” jewelry is. She spends days researching opportunities to sell her pieces, when opportunities seem to find “the other Her”, without effort. And my employee has to mark up her pieces so that she actually makes money at this endeavor, and “the other Her” does not. Or worse, “the other Her” has her jewelry marked up many times more than it’s worth, and it sells, because of the particular stores who display it — stores who do not accept just anyone’s jewelry, just those of wealthy women who live in the same part of town as the store owner does.
It is easier to compete with yourself, on your own terms, than with others. The jewelry business, with all its money, status and wealth implications and connections, offers different people different kinds of opportunities. There will be many people who won’t have the resources with which to compete. Realize that, accept it, and move on. Work with the resources you have and can afford. In America, it’s relatively easy to move in and out of situations with different income-class characteristics. But don’t get competitive by class status. Compete against yourself.
This doesn’t mean, if you are not rich, that you have to consign yourself to a second-status role in jewelry design. The sky’s the limit. Smart design, smart planning, smart management, smart marketing will take you wherever you want to go. But don’t waste a lot of time trying to tame the shrew in others. It’s a waste of energy. Stay self-focused.
The Great Equalizers
Although our wealthier customers might be very familiar with the 4 C’s — cut, color, carat, and clarity — they are generally clueless about most jewelry making materials, and even more clueless about the skills, techniques and strategies for assembling pieces of jewelry. And these are the Great Equalizers — Materials and Techniques.
There are no class distinctions when it comes to knowing what “gold-filled” is — few know. Or the differences between A+ and AB quality gemstones — few know. Or which stringing materials are appropriate for which situations — few know. Or which stitch works best with which beads — again, few people know.
So, Beading, because it is an art and requires learning a bag of specialized ideas and tricks, it has certain communal powers and undertones. People become dependent upon one another, no matter their economic class, in order to select materials, learn construction, and create beaded objects d’art, including jewelry.
No matter what the contradictions. No matter what the conflict. No matter what the class warfare. No matter what the personal conviction.
Shawn and Jessica brought their two adopted Korean boys to the Korean restaurant. It was important that they immerse their sons in Korean culture wherever they could. When they finished the meal, they told their two boys to say “Good-bye” to the hostess in Korean.
“Annyonghi kaysayo”
Good bye, the hostess replied.
And a little sparkle was added to their lives.
Each month, Laura and her co-workers would clean up their Adopt-A-Highway. The work was not hard. The camaraderie great. The task important. And each month she returned home with a great sense of self-satisfaction. And some sparkle was added to her life.
The two little Guatemalan girls were fascinated by the Spanish-English dictionary. They stood on the side of the road, giggling with eyes very wide open in amazement. With the Atitlan Volcano behind them and Lake Trinitaria in front of them, they marveled at seeing so many words in such a small book — so many more words than their teacher could ever write on their chalkboard. And some sparkle was added to their lives.
Like other things in life, jewelry adds a little sparkle to people’s lives. And the jewelry designer, in many ways, determines how.
Sarah had never been to a large fabric store before. So when she entered MOOD in New York City, she nearly collapsed with excitement. She was shaking. Where to begin? Where to begin? She ran here. She ran there. She ran her hands along yards and yards and yards and yards of material. She found fabric patterns to compliment the line of jewelry she made. And some sparkle was added to her life.
Sue and Allan had made reservations for the Chef’s table at Dandelion’s eleven months ago. And they were lucky to get the reservation even then, but someone had canceled just minutes before Sue called to make the reservation. This was their very special night. As they were ushered into the restaurant, past one dining room, then another, past patrons enjoying their meals, and then they entered the kitchen door and were seated at the very cozy table. The Chef greeted them. Sue lightly touched her necklace, in a reassuring manner. And their night was as special as they imagined. And, yes, some sparkle was added to their lives, as well.
Aldia was on vacation, and the store clerk asked where she was from. I live in The Villages near Orlando in Florida, she said. They have 45 golf courses in that community! Do you believe it? she continued. I love The Villages. Everyone says Hello! to you. Everyone will love the beads I bought here. And there was a sparkle that came to her eye.
And as in other situations in life, the jewelry designer not only creates sparkle, but also must be very sensitive to how this sparkle enters people’s lives.
Jewelry may help people feel attached to their surroundings, Be more aware of themselves. Their status. Their situation. Their power. Their sexuality. Jewelry may serve to open up a whole new world for someone. Jewelry may signify how people may safely interact, and not interact. It may start conversations. As well as end them.
The jewelry artist designs jewelry. She or he selects materials to use. An order or arrangement is decided upon. A hypothesis is formulated about how best to assemble the pieces. And the hypothesis is put to the test. And hopefully the finished piece is more than the sum of its parts. Because it has to add sparkle to people’s lives.
The crazy black-white-brown-black-white-brown-black-white-brown piece Lucinda wore to the Latin dance club.
The silken pearl necklace which adorned Gena at her wedding.
The long, multi-strand necklace, with strong navy blues, and very large beads with almost mirror-polished flat surfaces that Paula always wore on days of staff meetings.
The very tiny hoops with simple 3mm crystal dangles that Missy wore every day in her life, everywhere she went, every time she left her home.
Jewelry adds sparkle not only to the life of the person wearing it, but also to the person viewing it. So the jewelry designer, in actuality, has to be doubly-effective with his or her designs. The successful jewelry designer has to be able to come up with designs that create sparkled “squared” — a double dose.
Adding “sparkle” is not, however, only about bright, sparkly things. It doesn’t mean adding glitz. It is not about bling. It’s some more subtle thing. Sparkle is something that wells up within. It is completing, reassuring, reaffirming, self-actualizing, reconnecting. It is a momentary oneness with the air, a breathlessness, a feeling so good welling up within you. A smile.
So, we must have some insight, some clue, some fathoming of how the person — whether the wearer or the viewer — begins to sparkle from within. What are they seeing? What are they noticing? How are they interpreting? How are they understanding?
How is their eye and brain working, when it interacts with jewelry, on a perceptual level? What is the eye and brain really seeing? What is it really responding to?
How is their brain interpreting what it sees? How does the brain come to evaluate the degree to which any piece of jewelry meets a person’s needs, wants, desires, motivations? For sparkle.
How does all this translation of lines and points and shapes and colors and textures and patterns and lights and shadows and drapes and flows and movements and silhouettes result in a sparkling from within?
The search for these answers is very much a part of what it means to pursue a sense of design. Otherwise, you will never truly succeed, through your jewelry, at adding a little sparkle in people’s lives.
Except in a random sense.
And that’s not good enough.
The Jewelry Designer Is A Conductor … Of Sparkle
The elements in jewelry, and their arrangement, play a song. These can be one note. These can be many notes. Or chords. Harmonic. Orchestral. Symphonic. Jazz. Waltz. Hip Hop. Cacophony. The jewelry designer needs to be able to hear this song in their inner ear as they design. Because they are responsible for the arrangement. And tweaking or changing the arrangement.
The jewelry designer is a Conductor.
Of sparkle.
Avoiding discord.
Sparkle Requires No Non-Essential Elements
The best jewelry — the most attractive, the most powerful, the most functional, the most inner-sparkling — are pieces within which there are no extraneous elements. Adding (or subtracting) anything within the pieces no longer makes it a better piece.
Here’s where many prospective jewelry designers trip up. Most try to over-embellish their pieces. If one fringe works, 12 fringes will work better. If bead-bezeled cabochons worked, 6 more will be better. They think if one sparkle is enough, many sparkles will be better.
And others are afraid to add more pieces, for fear someone will think they are show’y. They are afraid of too much sparkle. They shy away from asserting power. They are uncertain. If someone says one piece is beautiful, they wonder if they could create it again. Successful jewelry scares them.
These kinds of jewelry designers substitute more sparkle (or less sparkle) as a way of avoiding making hard choices — choices to find that parsimonious array of sparkle and conclusion which works.
I have found that many people get frustrated with these sites, in that sales can be minimal, or the numbers of people they are competing with seems daunting. But I have found these same people not doing all the necessary “good business” tasks, such as some intensive and persistent marketing of their wares, and smart photo and text detail for their pieces.
Question: WHAT KINDS OF EXPERIENCES HAVE YOU HAD, and WHAT KINDS OF TIPS CAN YOU OFFER?
Here’s some of the things I have found.
First, there are many, many online marketplaces to choose from. Some let you set up your own website, and others show your merchandise as part of a larger marketplace. Each has pros and cons. Perhaps one lesson is: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”
The PROS for any site: – low commission on sales – good traffic – ease of setting up your shop – having a lot of control over how your shop looks; how customizable it is – no monthly fees – web host does a lot of promotion – site has a good search function – site has good statistics, and lets you easily track traffic and what has sold, at what price point, and when, for both of your specific merchandise, as well as for all merchants with similar merchandise
The CONS for any site: – high commissions and/or fees – when site is too big, may be difficult to get noticed – host limits how you list and present your items – host restricts your contact with your customers
Other types of questions to ask:
– Does site handle the billing and payments for you? – What kind of marketing does the site do? – Is it relatively easy to set up your site and keep it updated? – Are there are limitations on the numbers of items you might list at one time? – Are there any limitations on the number or size of photos you can include on your site? – How and where will your items appear in a search listing on the host’s site? – What payment methods/options are allowed? – Does the site restrict items to “Handmade” only, and how is “Handmade” defined? You do not want to compete with cheap, imported, machine made jewelry. – How easy is it to contact customer service? Do they provide a lot of easy-to-follow tutorials for setting up and managing your site?
Different types of fees that might be assessed: 1. Listing fee 2. Sales commissions, usually as a percent of sale 3. Renewal fees (when listings are time limited) 4. Monthly site maintenance fees
Some Tips and Advice:
(1) Your items should be different enough from others to set you apart, and get you remembered (2) If your items are similar to others, you might consider competing on price (3) Do NOT depend on the host to promote your site; you must actively — that means, almost every day — do things to promote your site. (4) Don’t just list your items and let them sit there (5) Excellent photos are a must (6) Treat your online shop as a business, not a hobby (7) Categorize and label your jewelry and jewelry lines; picture the words someone might type into a search bar in order to find this jewelry, and use those as key words in your labeling (8) Let your passion shine
Many, many people you will be competing with do not necessarily have good business sense, particularly when it comes to pricing their jewelry. People, in general, tend to underprice their pieces. They go out of business quickly. But while they’re in business, you are competing with them, and often you find it hard to compete on price.
This is a given. That means you have to spend more energy on marketing your competitive advantages, in order to justify the prices you need to charge, in order to stay in business. Some of this will come down to better presentation — more facts and great detailed images about your jewelry, and more details about the how your jewelry will benefit your customer. Better presentation equals more trust; more trust should translate into more sales. Some more competitive advantages: your jewelry is better made; it uses better materials; your line of jewelry is broader; you have better customer care policies; your style is more unique; your jewelry supports as “cause”.
And many, many more people you will be competing with have very good business sense. There are over 6 million items of jewelry on sale on Etsy at any one time — many by sharp, savvy artists. To get seen, heard and responded to takes emphasizing your competitive advantages, as well as persistent, broadly targeted marketing.
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