Craftopolis is a great time saving device for Etsy shopowners. It's one of the free access websites that tells Etsy sellers if they are in a treasury or not at the click of a button. This website also lets you know when treasuries are opening up, how many hearts your shop has, whether or not your items are in an Etsy gift guide. All great time-saving devices. In fact, there are several free time-saving websites for Etsy shopowners on the web. Here are the ones I know of and use:
These items included wall hangings, pillow covers, slippers, vases and spectacle cases. Peranakan beadwork is highly coloured and uses the most wonderfully intricate floral motifs and Chinese symbols to create works of art. It was the job of a betrothed woman to produce the beaded items for the wedding chamber as part of her dowry. The detail and scale of this beadwork meant that many hundreds of hours of unpaid labour went into adorning the wedding chamber. Peranakan beading declined after World War II, so pieces from the early 1900s are very collectible and very expensive.
It was in Singapore that I first saw an original early 1900s piece of Peranakan beadwork up close. It was a breathtakingly beautiful wall hanging for above the wedding bead. The hundreds of unpaid hours that had gone into its making was very evident. It was the same day that I first saw a stash of the beautiful vintage Charlotte hanks that had been used to create the original beadwork. I had just finished taking a beading class with Robert Sng (see photo of Robert at work) 
a Singaporean beader working to keep the art of Peranakan beadwork alive by making and selling Peranakan beaded slippers and giving classes. At the end of my second class with him he opened a drawer in his shop to show me some beautiful antique Peranakan beadwork and his stash of tiny hanks of antique Charlotte beads that he had bought in France. The beadwork was stunning and the tiny hanks of beads a thing of beauty. They were so dainty and sparkly. Robert uses the antique Charlottes to bead his most beautiful and intricate slipper designs. Each pair of slippers take him over 80 hours to complete and he sells them for around 800.00 Singapore dollars. Whilst that’s more than the Peranakan women received for their beading labours $10.00 per hour is barely a living wage in Singapore. Robert says that he does it as a labour of love to keep the art alive it but it seems sad and unfair that such little value is placed on his skilled beadwork. He is such a delightful and passionate advocate for this traditional bead art. Mind you, recent conversations amongst the Etsy Beadweavers Team suggest that he is not alone in that. Many contemporary beadwork artists in the US and beyond struggle to earn more than $10.00 an hour for their stunning work. Things of beauty do have intrinsic value but those who make them do need to eat, pay mortgages and generally survive. The tiny hanks of Charlotte beads used by the French beaded purse makers and the Peranakan beaders were so common from the 1840s and through to the turn of the 19th century that they sold for just a few cents. Now you can buy them online for between US 20.00 and US 30.00 per hank. I wonder if in another 100 years the labour of beadweavers will increase similarly, or will we still be struggling to earn a living?
If you are ever in Singapore you can see Robert’s work in his shop - Little Shophouse, 43 Bussorah St, Singapore. Phone: 6295 2328). The art of Peranakan beadwork, like the hanks of antique French beads I saw in Robert’s shop is now becoming quite rare and today Robert is one of the few remaining practitioners of the art. It’s a great privilege to see the work and meet the delightfully friendly man behind it.
A case in point was the stunning sea sediment jasper pendant (see photo) I have just listed on Etsy. 
The main close-up photo I took of Sea Jasper was one of my better quality photos. It’s far from perfect but it for an untrained photographer with a point and shoot camera it’s not bad. Yet, it just doesn’t convey the lovely soft sheen of the cabochon or capture the translucence you see in real life. Trying to describe the cabochon for listing on Etsy I realised just how limited my vocabulary is for describing gemstone surfaces.
This has begun to niggle at me and since listing the Sea Jasper necklace I’ve done some homework. I found some delightful words used by words used by those gemmologists to describe the surface of sea sediment jasper – it is transparent, translucid, luminescent and fluorescent. Fire agate, the centre of a piece I am working on at present is described on one gemmology site as iridescent. I now realise that it the gemmology language of ‘lustre’ I’m lacking. Lustre is the sheen, shine, patina or gleam of a surface, such as a gemstone. The language of lustre is full of wonderful adjectives – glow, glimmer, sparkle, glitter, twinkle, glisten and shimmer to name a few.
In gemmology lustre refers to the radiance and gloss of a gemstones surface that is created by light reflecting from it and there is a well-recognised language for describing the lustre of different gemstones. For instance:
Whilst, greasy and resinous lustres might not instantly conjure up images of beauty and style, and very few people might know what an adamanite lustre is, I will add ‘silky’ and ‘pearly’ to my newly acquired lustre list.
My homework has given me 15 new words to help me try to speak for gemstones I use:
A class with Maggie Meister converted me to using coloured bead thread in my beadweaving. Maggie provided gold thread to use with the gold Toho beads that were central to the project she was teaching. Being a creature of habit I had started the project using my favourite thread - black Silamide. It quickly became apparent that Maggie’s gold beadwork was more fabulously gold than mine because she was using gold, not black thread. Then and there I became a convert to matching thread colour to my beads and quickly accrued a rainbow of beading threads. Each time I stumbled across a new colour thread I bought it. Suddenly, translucent Delica gained a beautiful soft glow when I used them. My latest creation (just about to post on Etsy) is a case in point. I used purple Silamide thread with translucent purple Delica beads and it has produced a fabulous soft purple glow to finished weaving. However, my stash of coloured threads has grown in a very adhoc way. I see a colour I don’t have and I buy it. This has produced a stash that is a kaleidoscope of thread brands and it’s taken me a while to learn that not all bead threads are equal. My purple Silamide thread has been so frustrating to use. It seems to split and fray so easily. Similarly, with the wonderful array of colours I have in Nymo thread. One-G and SoNo have been fabulous to use. SoNo in particular just seems to glide unproblematically through the needle every time. Unfortunately, my adhoc purchasing means that I only have those in burgundy and black. I also have an unreliable memory when it comes to remembering the frustrations and fabulosity of beading threads. So, to help lesson the frustrations of beading with threads that fray, tangle and split I’ve begun to summarise my experiences (see below) so I can be clear about what my favourite beading thread is and why. Would love to hear about your beading thread frustrations and fabulosity. What’s your favourite beading thread? Why?
Posts
All Comments
