For many years, I made red, white and blue beads as an USian tchotchke to give away during my visits to Japan. Japanese people like American stuff as a rule (even if they're not necessarily that keen on the Americans themselves) and since it's blindingly obvious to any Japanese person that I'm a tourist, I figure I may as well lean in.
assorted patriotic spot ’n’ streaks, 24 may 2024; effetre glass, hollow wound on 3/32" mandrels with trailing. Approximately 12mm in diameter. Photographed 29may2024, sony ILCE-7C, 90mm sony macro, godox flash, 1/60s, f/4.5, EV -0.3, ISO 50; cropped, dust cloned/removed & lightened in gimp
In the spring[1] of 2024 I was still making red, white and blue beads to hand out, and from a purely design sense I was actually pretty happy with these beads. I tend to favour transparent base colours, but was attempting to emphasize the stripe aspect by using (artist-made) filigrana, which is particularly obvious in the upper right-most bead. The filigrana aspect is only semi-successful, but I do like the contrast between the transparent cobalt and opaque red glass.
I did really like the way the trailing, that is, the dots and streaks, subtly represented the US flag, what with the dots on the blue, and the streaks on the red suggesting stars and stripes respectively.
studio notebook page for these beads, showing date of manufacture; so nice that I can just take a picture instead of writing a careful description or even more time consuming, making a sketch...
As you can see, I made these beads while my glass buddy Fran was visiting:) It is rather sad, in a way, how seldom I make beads on my own, the past few years. Yet another reason to find some new apprentices!
[1]when Biden was still in office, i.e. the USA government was functional, playing at least sort-of nice to our allies, or as nice as you might expect a superpower to do, and thus, operating under the delusion that the US electorate could not possibly be foolish tribal enough to re-elect the felon guy, and so feeling not too embarrassed at being a US citizen...oh, the disappointments that lay in store! I do not feel the franchise should be limited to a select few or otherwise subject to testing, but I sure understood the feelings of people who do after the 2024 election. Talk about voting against one's interests, as the midterms surely proved.
Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.
