I made these beads because I have a customer enamored of a particular shade of yellow-based (i.e. warm) pixie-dusted odd lot lauscha pink. Odd lots are the glass the manufacturer pulled to use up the stuff that doesn't match any of their standard production, most often when they're switching from one color to another. By their nature, they're not repeatable.

For years, I've been all about the blue-based pinks, cuz they're so darned difficult—either the glass to make is horrendously expensive, like effetre's gold ruby, or miserably difficult to strike, like check glass tourmaline, or both. The standard effetre 068 pink has a slight orangey cast to it, and PIG pink also tends to shift to this color, especially when it's worked a lot or garaged for a long time (the stuff is so poppy that I sometimes anneal rods I've joined together!)

In addition to playing with glass, I've also been playing with narrow depth of field, which is a surprisingly nice effect. BE & check glass Pb shampoo; hollow dotties, Jan 09. Largest, about 20mm.

So orangey pinks have kinda gotten short shrift, thought, when you stop and think about it, orange is even rarer than pink—effetre has one transparent orange, BE has ...well, in addition to the standard trans orange, they've got a 1400 series coral, and an 1800 series coral tint. The soda-lime check glass line used to have a kind of nice yellow-orange...that's all I can think of in transparent soft glass.

More fun with photos. Given etsy's white backgrounds which especially turn thumbnails to dark blobs, I'm moving to shooting in a higher key.

Initially, I thought the BE would make a substitute for the lauscha odd-lot. Um, I appreciate how quick and hard the BE coral strikes, after fighting with tongue pink floral cane, assorted boro warm yellows and the like, really, I do—but it's much darker, though certainly a beautiful color. The tint, naturally, is too light.

—I haven't done much the shampoo glass (another Jan Burrows "check glass" product) I bought, and some of it, though opaque, is certainly a beautiful coral pink. And if I could figure out how to selectively apply it, I thought it make attractive beads. And it did, though the color gradations are so subtle that the photography doesn't really show them, alas.

The search for a good substitute for the lauscha odd-lot pink continues, however.

Beads, roughly 15–20jan09; photography & post 21jan09

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