BUILD YOUR OWN BEADS
A glass-blowing lesson
Q What did you do?
A I took a cane of soda lime, flame worked up some gather, wrapped it onto a mandrel, dabbed on some stringer, shaped it all on a marver, then annealed it.
Q Um, could you rephrase that?
A Gladly: I made glass beads. Thanks to the introductory “bead-teaser” class at Ottawa’s Flo Glassblowing studio, I now have some unique — if woefully amateurish — jewelry that my wife is almost willing to wear in public. And I’ve also forged appreciation for the skill required for even this simple form of glass-blowing.
Q Tell me more
A One of the studio’s flamework instructors, Charlynne Lafontaine — everyone calls her Charlie — began with safety procedures. After all, the glass for bead-making is heated to about 1,100 degrees Celsius by a torch mounted at each workstation. Despite industrial-strength ventilation, I was glad I wore just a T-shirt. Goggles shield eyes from the blinding orange flame.
After that, we were introduced to the glass we’d be working with, an Italian type called soda lime that Charlie said is good for beginners. The long polished strands, about the size of drinking straws, are called canes and come in a rainbow of colours, transparent and opaque.
Q What was it like to work with?
A Daunting at first. But Charlie was patient, and I became increasingly comfortable. First, we learned to introduce the glass to the flame slowly, so bits wouldn’t fracture and burn us. I melted one transparent cane, then stretched it with tweezers to make a much thinner strand, called a stringer. It was set aside to decorate my beads later. Then, I heated one end of an opaque cane until it melted into a chickpea-sized blob. Charlie called the blob “gather.”
Continuing to melt the glass, I picked up a mandrel — something that looks like a sparkler for a birthday cake — and dropped the molten gather onto it, turning the mandrel slowly so the glass would build evenly into the size of bead I wanted. When the bead was formed, I heated the stringer and added tiny dots for decoration. There was a constant dance between heating the glass in the flame and taking it out, so as to control the temperature and to use gravity to maintain symmetry. At least that was the theory.
Q Theory? So everything didn’t go according to plan?
A Let’s just say no one has offered to buy my work. A couple of mandrels snapped, my beads were anything but round, and the decorations were laboured. Charlie diplomatically summed up my style in one word: “organic.” But by my last bead, I’d begun to control the process better and designed a cylindrical bead that was further shaped by gently rolling it on a slab of graphite called a marver.
Q Did you take your beads home right after class?
A No, they have to cool down. That annealing process takes several hours in a kiln, where temperatures are programmed so the glass doesn’t cool too quickly and snap. The colours are more dramatic after cooling.
Q Why did you want to do beadwork?
A Besides being able to throw around strange words, you mean? I’ve never succeeded at artistic pursuits, so when I learned Flo Glassblowing offers this 90-minute class, which they claim is their simplest, I opted in.
Q Tell me about your instructor.
A Charlie has worked as a glass artist for about 15 years and recently spearheaded a new artists’ collective, Loretta Gallery and Studio in Hintonburg. She’s exhibited in such places as the Corning Museum of Glass, where she unveiled a 35-kilogram coat made of 8,000 pieces of blown glass and modelled on her grandmother’s fur. In mid-November, she’ll be in a group show of wearable art at The School of Dance.
Q Who should take this class?
A Just about anyone. My classmate was Klara Andersson, until recently a member of Sweden’s national kayaking team. She moved to Ottawa a couple of months ago and was seeking a new hobby. “I love to do stuff with my hands, such as crochet and knitting,” she told me. “I like to see how to make things.” Her work put mine to shame. Then, too, glass-blowing has been dubbed “the extreme sport of the art world.”
Q Bottom line?
A I’ve already asked Santa for more lessons. Indeed, the experience was marver-llous.