It occurred to me that it might be possible to do a similar course in Cape Town and if so, it was likely to be cheaper than in the UK. After some googling, I found one that sounded exactly what I was after - a one-day course by Nicky Hayden in the Cape Town area. When I rang her, she was friendly and helpful, and suggested that rather than go to her studio in Durbanville, it might be more convenient for me to go to her other studio at the Biscuit Mill in the heart of Cape Town, where she works on Saturdays. That suited me fine, as it's only about three miles from where we are renting an apartment, and is a really interesting location. It's a lively food and high quality craft market which is open every Saturday, on the site of an old biscuit mill.
We agreed a date and Nicky very kindly offered to gear the course to my particular interests and (lack of) abilities. It would be one-to-one and she would provide hot drinks - courtesy of her obliging husband Terry - and a sandwich lunch.
I arrived at 9.30am and after a safety briefing Nicky started by explaining about the properties of different types of glass and what they are used for. The type most often used for bead making is Effetre glass, which is one of the softest and available in a wide range of colours. It comes in long thin rods, which are heated to about 520 degrees until the glass begins to melt and can be moulded. Safety glasses are needed to protect the eyes from the sodium flare. They have the effect of making the flame appear a soft mauve, rather than a harsh white/orange.
My first task, following a demonstration by Nicky, was to make a simple round bead. Having heated a thin steel rod called a mandrel, which you hold horizontally in your left hand (if you are right-handed), you select a coloured glass rod and heat the tip in the flame, holding it like a pencil in your right hand, until it starts to melt. You then slowly and evenly rotate the mandrel so that the molten glass forms a smooth circle around it. If the edges start to get uneven, you use a metal paddle to firm and straighten them, while continuing to rotate the mandrel.
My first attempt was a complete failure. It wasn't remotely round and it fractured:
After three more tries I improved, though you can see the huge gulf between my efforts - the blue glass blobs - and Nicky's.
Next came the making of a barrel bead, by forming two circles of molten glass on the mandrel and then in-filling the space between with more circles and finally fattening up this base layer, to create one smooth barrel-shaped bead. My second attempt in turquoise opaque glass was an improvement on my first in clear blue glass, but neither bears comparison with Nicky's in dark green:
After a cup of tea we moved on to making stringers, which are extremely thin rods of glass used for adding little raised dots onto beads. You heat the tip of a normal rod until it starts to form a molten ball. Using tweezers, you then grasp that ball and quickly pull it out to form a long thin rod, or stringer, which you snip off with pliers:
That was relatively simple but I had problems using my stringers to make beads with raised dots. In theory all I had to do was make a simple round bead and while it was still soft, heat the tip of the stringer and - out of the flame - place a tiny blob of it onto the surface of the bead, and then bring the bead up to the outer edge of the flame to cut the stringer. This has to be repeated for each dot, which should be evenly sized and spaced around the bead. I managed one reasonable dot, but the rest were a mess. Nicky's, as you can see, were perfect:
After lunch, things improved as we moved on to creating beads with pressed-in dots. The technique is the same as for raised dots, except that you keep the bead in the flame and gently press the molten stringer glass into the bead, so that the dot is absorbed flush into it. I enjoyed the process and my green and black bead at least bore some comparison to Nicky's blue and white one:
Finally, I had a go at making a similar style of bead but using tiny millefiori ("thousand flower") beads instead of a stringer. The technique is similar except that you hold the millefiori bead with tweezers in the flame and push it into the round bead, using just enough heat and pressure without distorting the flower image. I found it difficult not to overheat and/or squash the millefiori bead so that it entirely lost its flower image, and in trying to avoid this I forgot to keep the round "host" bead at a constant temperature, which meant it started to lose its shape. Here is the end result, with my effort on the left and Nicky's on the right, with a collection of millefiori beads below which Nicky generously gave me:
I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience and was delighted to receive a certificate at the end, which at least proves I was there!
No comments:
Post a Comment