This week, we are learning more about Czech glass bead making and focusing on a shape that appeared only a few years back and, in my opinion, hasn’t gotten enough attention yet in the beading world: the extra low cabochon. I talked about both of these topics during yesterday’s #CoffeeTimeWithErika, and I will also bring them to you in the form of two blog posts, in case you prefer reading. Today the one about bead making, and a bit later about the cabochons.
Recently, we visited the Crystal Valley in the Czech Republic, where most of our shinies are made. There is so much to learn and so much that I want to show and share with you—I will keep shedding layers of all the behind-the-scenes happenings from the bead factories for a long time.
Make sure to follow Beadingschool on our social media channels to learn all about it! You can do it here: Beadingschool YouTube channel and Beadingschool Facebook page.
Material
To shed another layer from all the knowledge that we collected in Jablonec, today I’d like to tell you about the material used for our beads.
Wood, water, and sand are the main resources needed for glassmaking. You could find incredibly high quality glass sand with minimum imperfections, wood to fire up the kilns (which are nowadays heated by gas or electricity), and plenty of water in the Crystal Valley. That’s basically the reason why this is exactly the area where the industry developed more than 500 years ago.
However, out of the three, you won’t see any raw glass sand if you visit a bead-making factory. Melting glass happens elsewhere. Glass rods are the raw material used by the bead-making factories. The raw materials for glass rods are sand, baking soda, potassium carbonate, and limestone. These are ground and mixed.
Different colors require different extra ingredients to add the pigments to the glass. These can be manganese for purple, copper for blue, sulfur, and graphite for brown and yellow.
An interesting fact: some colors, like pink and fuchsia, contain particles of real gold, and that’s why they are so much more expensive!
Each color has a different recipe, in some cases a different recipe for each size of beads that is being produced. Preciosa Crystals, for example, develops a different recipe for each shape, so the shade is the same over the whole range of sizes. However, with other glass beads it happens that even if you see the same code, the color itself differs from size to size.
This is handy to remember!
And I’d like to repeat, as I think it’s very important to learn, that even if these recipes exist, and the factories do their best to keep colors consistent, sometimes it’s simply not possible. Humidity and temperature can cause slight changes, and that’s why the same recipe produces a different effect on a hot, humid summer day and in the middle of an ice cold winter.
Fun fact: while walking around in one of the warehouses, we discovered that some beads are marked with a text: ‘Beadingschool color.’ The reason is, that our partners wanted to keep the colors as consistent for you as possible, so until they have a specific shade in stock, they will keep sending the same.
No other company was mentioned this way on the shelves, so this is really a special treatment that we appreciate, and what is the result of the care and work of Andrea and the Purchasing Team.
The rods produced from the glass sand are approximately 1 meter long, 2-2.5 cm wide, and weigh 2 kg. They are made at a very high temperature: 1300-1500 C, where the raw material melts. They are then cooled for 20-30 hours.
Some glass rods are still made manually, even if machines can produce something similar. However: manually made glass rods are perfectly smooth, and it is possible to create layered colors that some of you like so much.
What was the most interesting thing that you learned about bead-making? Tell me in a comment! And share this article with your beading friends 🙂
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