Some number of years ago I bought a bunch of lovely looking seed beads that came in fabulous colors—celadon greens, creams, ivories, even maroons and fuchsias. Alas, they were all painted and turned white in the kiln. (If you don't have a kiln, I was thumbing through an old B&B mag the other day and some grand old dame of beading—one of the Beadcats ladies, IIRC—said to put your beads in a dish of acetone overnight to test ’em for dyes and paints, and other surface treatments that wouldn't stand up to the washing machine.) I've been bummed ever since, and concluded, with no evidence aside from the similarity of the coatings’ appearance, that a lot of my delicas in similar colorways, as well as other beads I'd picked up, were just as prone to impermance.

But some very nice seed and bugle beads at quite a nice lansing bead shop tempted me to a number of rather expensive purchases ($9 for a tube of seed beads, even if lovely purple hex cuts? —Ow!) which, having spent all that money, I was curious to see if I shelling out for gold in glass or paint on glass. And lo and behold, all the beads were good!

Assorted kiln-proof seed and bugle beads. The loose beads are the ones that went through 980deg. Yippee.

And of course, not all coatings are bad—I use czech pressed glass with coatings all the time, and in fact make my own coated beads as well—usually with powders, but occasionally with fuming. So yes, coatings can wear off, but my feelings changed from "all coatings are automatically bad" to "coatings that are cooked on are all right." —I once bought some lovely fuchsia beads that were plastic coated glass, and I've wondered, ever since, whether the pretty pink (pressed) beads I've been buying were really that color through and through.

Having had some good luck, I decided to actually test my theories on some of the older stuff—if for no other reason to see if it was worth incorporating into good stuff, or diverted into french-beaded flower practice, which I expect to chew through a lot of beads in the near future..

Tested samples are in the white dish. Beads to the left of the dish all passed my test, which consisted of firing them to 980 degrees (that is, I stuck ’em in while annealing some lampwork). The two to the right burned white. Not bad.

As you see, the delicas—at least those from 10–15 years ago—passed with (ahem) flying colors. Even one of the non-delica pink seed beads was ok. So good, a lot of beads I didn't want to be putting in elaborate, time-consuming pieces have the potential now of being good to go.

Of course, now I've got a bunch of other tests to run...

filed created 5apr08, completed 7apr08.

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