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Vintage Lampwork Glass Beads |
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Written by Jan Parker
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Sunday, 02 September 2007 |
 This is harder than I thought! I told all you bead lovers that I would auction off some of my beads and spread them around to other collectors. It was more difficult to part with some of them than I thought it would be. Now I should make a disclaimer here: I’m not a bead expert. Yes, I own a bead store, but I don’t claim to know a lot about antique beads, jet beads, or even what is currently being produced by Swarovski and what isn’t. I do the payroll, I do the books, I pay the bills. All I know is what I love. I love antiques in general, anything with history and wear to it. I love sparkles, flowers and cranberry glass. I love the “real” purple beads and the cranberry beads with the colors they don’t make any more. Someone once told me those old colors were made with chemicals that people wouldn’t work with now, like arsenic. They are beautiful but well, yeah, I can see that they can’t work with nasty things like arsenic these days.
 We had a customer a few years ago that had a concern that there might be radiation from some of the old beads we sell. We thought we’d check that out for her. My brother, who works in the nuclear power industry, brought a radiation detector here to the store. After hours, we ran it over all the beads. One strand of beautiful old Vaseline Glass (the Depression glass that is lime green and really lights up under a black light) was the only beads that moved the meter at all. Not enough to hurt anyone, my brother said unless you wore them 24/7 for 50 years. Or if you ate them….I wish I had put some of those in my collector stash! Of course they are all gone now.
 Now about the beads I’m going to start sharing with you: Heather, my wonderful daughter and partner at the store, knows so much about beads. She can identify almost anything. I may run the beads I’m parting with by her to get more info for you or I may just describe them myself and what I love about them. They may be old beads or they may be new beads made by some artist whose work I saw and loved. I probably don’t even remember their name, but Heather might recognize the style. Like I said, she’s good! She’s also smart and beautiful as well as a wonderful mother to my two gorgeous grandsons, Max 4 ½ and Alex 3 months. Oh oh, now I can’t have her proof read this because she’d never let me put it on the website. I have another beautiful daughter that moved from Maine to Arizona to go to ASU several years ago. She didn’t come back! (Well, except for visits when every other word she says is “Geez, it’s cold!”) I’ll probably talk about her from time to time as well, much to her dismay.
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