Posts Tagged ‘handcrafted necklaces’
A Day at the Artisan Jewelry Trade Show
Sometimes people can have the most outrageous hobbies. My cousin Vinnie enjoys collecting garbage from the streets. You might think that he’s just doing his part to keep our planet clean, but they strange part if he never throws any of it away. He doesn’t even take it to the recycling depot. His cupboards and closets are filled with smelly banana peels, old soda cans, beer bottles, tattered tarp and tire scraps. Disgusting, I know.
My family has devised a plan to empty his apartment of his 3-year-old garbage collection. Because he can’t be swayed to part with this mess, we must be sneaky and clean out his place while he’s not home. I was assigned to be the decoy, so I asked him to accompany me to a artisan jewelry trade show – beads have always made him happy. While we’re gone my aunt Phyllis and my brother Tom will use their spare key to enter Vinnie’s apartment and ransack his stash. When Vinnie and I arrive back at his place, we’re going to tell him that he’s been robbed.
Gorgeous Glass Jewelry
While some people think that jewelry has to contain precious gemstones to be beautiful, in truth some of the most gorgeous jewelry is made from plain old glass. Glass, while not representing quite the distinction of a precious gemstone, is a hardy material that has a wonderful luster and can be molded into different shapes. When thinking of glass jewelry, don’t believe that these accessories feature the same clear glass found in window panes. Glass jewelry is much more like a stained glass window than it is a standard window pane. Each piece of glass jewelry contains unique colors, and because of the manner in which glass jewelry is heated, there’s never one piece quite the same as another.
Amongst glass jewelry, you will find glass necklaces, bracelets, and earrings the most common accessories. But glass can be used to create any kind of accessory, and because glass is so malleable, it’s much easier to craft it into a unique shape than a precious stone. Celebrate glass jewelry by giving it to friends and family!
An Old Style Reborn
Lampwork is one of the most stylized and intricate ways of creating glass jewelry. As one might guess from the name, the first examples of lampwork were fashioned by melting tubes of colored glass over an especially hot lamp. This method has died out almost completely in modern times, but the quaintly decorative end result remains the same. Lampwork necklaces feature finely shaped glass beads that are molded with much the same tools that a glassblower would use.
The most prominent lampworkers in history were most likely the Italian artisans who flourished during the Renaissance. Cultural centers such as Venice and Florence contained flourishing markets for glass jewelry and other elegant accoutrements. American artists have been inspired by the form in the last few decades, and most of the lampwork jewelry we see today has been produced domestically.