Teaching Men to Bead

This isn’t what you think. Raising my right hand into the air: I swear this isn’t a jab against men beaders. No poking fun intended. I’m merely telling you about an evening I spent with a bunch of men. With beads. Let me explain.

The beading boys

My friend Nora is a beader… and also a nurse. She puts in long hours at a local hospital in the emergency department, which I admire greatly. She can handle tremendous pressure, stress and breezes through chaos like its nothing. I admire her tenacity, strength and ability to focus when things are hard. So naturally Nora is a beader. She says she needs beading because it’s the calm meditative side to her otherwise intense personality… and one balances the other out. Nora is married happily now for 24 years to Richard, not a beader. But he wants to be. Specifically, Richard wants to be a wire wrapping whiz. So Nora called me.

Making time for beading

Nora’s demanding schedule doesn’t leave a lot of leeway for creativity during daytime hours, so she asked me if I’d come to her house at night to give her husband a lesson. And maybe a few of his friends. I said ok. I packed the essentials and arrived to her house at about 7pm. There they were, sitting around the coffee table. Five guys who donned Harley Davidson t-shirts and ball caps, looking like they’d be more comfortable around a pool table or poker table than a kitchen table. They had tools in front of them with neat piles of beads and spools of wire. They were ready.

Bead babes

This was fun. You know how women are. Like a bunch of clucking hens, we sit, gossip and laugh and bead away into the night. This particular night I was surrounded by five o’clock shadows and these boys were staring at me, hanging on each word of my instruction. The picked up their tools and they were off! Silent room. Clicking and clanging of tools. No questions being asked. They handed me their first specimens for my approval, and these guys did great. They were officially hooked.

Braun and beads

Pretty soon, someone asked the question: Is this normal? A bunch of guys beading around a table. I said YES! Then I asked if they’d ever heard of Don Pierce, Dallas Lovett, David Chatt, Mark Lareau, Michael Barley, Huib Petersen… blah, blah, blah. No, they said. I told them a little bit about the different kinds of beading that these men do, and let them know that there are plenty of men taking classes at the bead store. I got a lot of raised eyebrows and curious looks. See for yourself, I said.

Boys in the bead store

When men enter the bead store is fun to watch. Its like they have a huge gravitational pull to the tool section. They study pliers and cutters and crimpers and tweezers and more with their hands on their hips, thinking of their own tools at home in their toolboxes. I have wondered if they were thinking of them in terms of pulling out a glob of hair from the drain, but I hoped not. My local California bead store employs a couple of men, who are incredible talented artists. Just because women dominate the bead worlds doesn’t mean there aren’t some roosters of note!

Adorning men with beads

A mistake designers make is creating jewelry only to appeal to the ladies. Men love jewelry. Ok, not all men. My husband wears a wedding ring and that’s it. But there are tons of the male persuasion out there adorning themselves with jewelry that compliments their masculinity. Remember that when you’re shopping for your supplies. Look for clasps and beads and components that will appeal to men.

Raising beaders

My two sons love beads. They’re only four and a half and two years old right now, but they love them passionately. My oldest son carries a purple bead in a small bag along with some other ‘treasure’ and has been known to occasionally swallow a few seed beads that I give him to play with. “It was an accident”, he said. My younger son wants to string, string, string. Somehow those beads fall off the other end. My house always has stray beads rolling around, so naturally they’re going to intercept them. I encourage it. Although I admit to howling when my youngest gets into my seed bead drawers and uses the containers as musical shakers. They have a growing interest in beading and I love that. Beads really are for everybody.

A real conversation with my son, Vincent, age 4 1/2…

“Mommy, can I have these beads?”

“Which ones?”

“All of them.”

“Really? All of them?”

“I need them. They’re making rainbows on my heart.”

“In that case, you can have all of them”

“Thanks, Mom.”

“Vincent, call me Mommy, not Mom. I’m not ready for you to be big yet.”

 “Ok, Mommy. Thanks for my rainbows. And the beads, too.”