I’m back! And here’s the plan for this month. I kept it down to 5 beads because I think this is going to take me forever. I am not, however, afraid of a challenge, and I think this will be a great measure of how far I’ve come during this study!
Again, Ojime beads were decorative beads made from all sorts of materials during Edo-era Japan. For my designs, I not only referenced actual Ojime beads but also other ceramic artworks from the same period. The first two beads (from left to right) are drawn directly from two artworks that you can find in this month’s gallery section, so go take a look!
It’s finally time to enter the concluding month of my independent study. I’ll save the mushy stuff for my actual last post (coming soon!), but for now, an update on April’s beads!!
As lovely as they turned out, I fought long and hard with these beads to try and shape/glaze them the way I wanted. The art of the satin glaze unfortunately eluded me, resulting in my first real fail of this entire project. The glaze–as I’m sure you can see in the picture above–was adequately opaque, but somehow manifested a patchy and chalky texture that was not at all my goal. I’m a little bummed out to be honest. I really wanted this exciting new glaze to work out, but you can’t win ’em all. Other than that, I’m extremely pleased with the shapes of the beads and the carved aspects of some of the larger biconal beads. I dug grooves into those beads when they were still wet to give myself an outline for the black and white design, then scraped the glaze out of the indents as needed during the actual glazing process to make sure the marks shined through.
For my final month of bead-making, I’m taking us to Japan! I saved a real whopper for last, and you’ll see why. The beads I will try to replicate this month are called Ojime beads, a traditional type of Japanese decorative bead used to adorn ropes and secure cords. From what I can gather, these beads seem to be a great deal larger than most of the beads I’ve done thus far, and I’m excited to try to get more decorative and intricate with my designs given this extra surface area! The Met had some great examples of Ojime beads on their website (seen below) that I’ll definitely be drawing inspiration from.
I still have to make my specific plans for this set, but I predict that this will feature fewer beads than normal both because of the time constraints on me (I’m graduating soon!! Yippee!!) and the size of these beads (not to mention the level of detail). I’ll be back with those plans as soon as I have them. Smell ya later!
