Page and I tend to go for a sort of goth or victorian look for a lot of our work, which translates to clear, jewel-toned transparents when we make beads. I wanted to do something a little different for the bead designs I made for this show, and I have a batch of untagged opaque yellow effetre that I particularly liked. The opaque yellow/orange/red pastels can be somewhat flameworked to strike them darker (Frantz was selling a transparent version of glass that could be variably struck from yellow to red for awhile), and this particular batch could, with some effort and more luck be struck to a very appealing orange tinge.

Set of five hollow lampwork beads. Effetre, July 2006. Roughly 13 mm hole to hole; retouched/edited photo, 12mar2014

That was the basis for this design. Because I wanted the hollow aspect of the beads to show, as well as fire's gaseous, semi-transparent nature, I used blue filigrana for the ice half of the bead. But, the cool thing to me is that, to get the glass to strike, you need a reducing flame, that is, one that is blue on the bottom with orange tips. So the design of these beads, simple as it is, works for me on three levels—aesthetically: I think they're pretty; metaphorically: in that they reproduce the flame that made them; and literally: in that the contrasting blue and orange colors recreate the title of the show, "Fire&Ice" for which I particularly made them.

I liked these beads so well I made a slightly larger pair of them in the same design into a pair of earrings for me, the first earrings I've made for myself in what—five years?^[1] A long time, at any rate.

File created 19jul07. Another version created on or around 4jan2010, never posted, but with minor image editing on the bead highlights to smooth them out. The pages were merged, and that edited image at full res, was slotted in 31mar21.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.