Artisans' Village Challenge-June 2015

 

Artisans’ Village Challenge:Recreate a Period Glass Bead- Given by Elysabeth Underhill Lady Aibhilin inghean Ui Phaidin 

(Erica Janowitz)

Challenges Faced and Lessons Learned:

The first challenge I faced was the prospect of doing research.  Though I have a Master’s Degree, the last time I did academic research and wrote any type of research paper was in 1992.  In fact, I believed I used a card catalog. Given my Irish persona and interest in medieval Ireland, Lissa directed me to Margaret Mannion’s Doctoral Dissertation: An Examination of Glass Beads from Early Medieval Ireland, which I read and took copious notes. For help with the process of documentation I have started look at our Artisans’ documentation including Lissa’s as well as reviewing the handout from a Pennsic class 5 Easy Steps to Writing Documentation for Arts and Sciences Competitions presented by Ian’ka, Tsritsa of Atenveldt, OL. At Lissa’s encouragement I started a blog to document the progression of bead and jewelry making.

Lissa suggested that I start with working on reproductions of the plain beads and then some of the decorated beads that are within my current repertoire (e.g., spots) or techniques that I could/should next (i.e., segmented using the marver and a melon bead).  In order to do this I needed to learn to reproduce the bead based on the original's diameter, height and perforation (i.e., center hole).  I decided that my first reproduction would be a blue Annular (Class 16) bead from the Lagore Crannóg site. Though making annular beads were in my repertoire, making a bead to specific dimensions was novel.  With the first 4 beads I was unable to get the diameter, height and perforation to the specifications of the original.

	Diameter	Height	Perforation
Original	10.7	6.3	4
1st attempt	10.39	5.89	2.35
2nd attempt	12.34	6.53	2.79
3rd attempt	14.92	4.98	4.06
4th attempt	10.61	6.25	2.26

Lissa then explained that I should look at the ranges of dimensions on the classification table versus just the dimensions of the specific bead when doing a reproduction. She also directed me to not measure down to the decimal point when looking at the originals or my reproductions.

	Diameter	Height	Perforation
Original ranges	6-11	3-7	5
Original	10	6	4
5th & final attempt	11	5	4

For Carowyn's Challenge I worked on the ability to reproduce identical/symmetrical beads (i.e., 3 for each earring) as well as learning a new wire technique. After making the first pair of earrings I realized that the perforations were a bit too big. So, I make another 6 beads with a smaller sized mandrel for a 2^nd pair of earrings. The perforation on these worked much better and I was successful at recreating fairly symmetrical beads.

What’s Next: Expanding this challenge into a project for the A&S Novice Tourney on 7/11/15

1.    Make a few more of the blue annular Class 16 bead to work on combining the skills of reproducing specific dimensions and multiple, consistent beads.

2.    I have now successfully made 2 melon beads. Initially when trying to make a melon bead I ended up getting the metal stuck in the bead; possibly due to the bead surface being too hot.  With the 2^nd bead, I made sure the bead wasn't too hot, and the knife didn't get stuck in the bead and I felt as though I had more control. Next I will work on reproducing the melon bead from the corpus of imported beads from Mannion’s dissertation.

3.    Reproduce the plain beads from Mannion’s Classification Table and Imported Beads.

4.    Reproduce the decorated beads that are within my current abilities (e.g., segmented, spots).

5.    Reproduce decorated beads using new techniques (e.g., mulberry, lines).  At SRWC, Lissa started to teach me using a stringer to make lines.