Before I learned to make glass beads, I worked primarily in semi-precious stones, that is, rocks cut into beads, which come in many brilliant and beautiful colours; alas, some of them are extremely expensive, and so the manufacturers, desiring to please customers wanting cheap fuchsia beads, dyed them.

lariat necklace featuring champleve focal beads; garnet, green aventurine, dyed quartz, seed beads, reproduction brass coins, vintage bugle beads, brass and copper accents; strung on thread, probably nylon; photograph 26sep2007, Nikon E8400, f/5.4, ev -0.7, 1/9s, ISO 50, photoflood? lighting; rotated, cropped, colour adjusted in gimp, 23dec23

This to me seemed like kind of a cheat, since the point of stone beads was to capture the beauty of the stone, not to mention the fact that dye fades (an even bigger problem). It seemed to me a better solution was simply to use beads that permanent rich colour, i.e. glass. (Well, as it turns out fuchsia glass is also expensive, albeit not as prohibitively as the rocks...)^[1]

closeup of same, nikon E8400, f/7.1, ev -0.7, 1/9s, ISO 50, incandescent lighting; with similar image editing to the above. I don't remember what the trade name of the opaque green beads was, but I'm guessing it's some sort of dyed quartz.^[2]

Obviously this piece was completed by late 2007, when I photographed it, but it could've been made any time between 2002 (when I made what I do know was an earlier piece) and then.

But I ended up with a collection of dyed beads, and decided, for whatever reason, that I could use them just this once, in this piece. I'm sure the fact that it's strung on thread—necessary for the properly floppy drape a lariat necklace demands—had something to do with this decision, because thread itself would be unlikely to last a really long time, especially with all those sharped edged bugles.

And it is a pretty necklace:)

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