Golden Apple Beads

11/29/2025

Made a longer video showing myself making a red and white pinwheel murrine rod and then using it to make peppermint pinwheels.

Watch me hum, whistle, and complain my way through a festive red and white bead with murrine pinwheels.

11/11/2025

08/17/2025

Home recovering from another successful Pennsic. It was, as always, a monumental undertaking, but especially with our daughter Evelyn really stepping up at the register and her boyfriend Leo helping at every turn as well, it felt more doable than some previous years.

07/31/2025

Set up at The Pennsic War with my family, including the talented Jacob Selmer, selling beads both ancient and modern.

07/20/2025

Made some reproduction spindle whorls. It's a fun little challenge to keep a blob of glass this large the proper shape while also making sure it's balanced. If I get it together enough to order some dowels in...I dunno, ash?, then I'll try whittling a spindle or two while I mind shop. If not, they'll be available on a build-your-own basis.

The reference image is from Margaret Guido's The Glass Beads of Anglo-Saxon England, 400-700 AD.

07/15/2025

This has been a hell of a year so far, but I'm glad to be belatedly stocking up for Pennsic. Getting rolling with some all-time faves, eye beads, these in the style of LaTene and Hallstatt finds. And of course, "Roman" green melon beads, which everyone loves on sight and which I can never make enough of.

03/17/2025

It may seem a little out of season, but I'm working on something big here.

03/15/2025

Percy has flowers for you! Dreaming of spring.

12/02/2024

Here's a quick storyboard of how I turn goldstone into strands of gold sparkle. Goldstone is glass heavily impregnated with tiny copper flakes. Usually, you buy it in broken chunks. By itself, it can't be worked like regular glass. It doesn't move right, and if you expose the copper to high heat in the presence of oxygen, the sparkle burns out. So you encase it in clear or a light color (this occluding oxygen) and then draw it out thin. It still has to be worked carefully to avoid overheating, but I love the effect.

11/27/2024

Tis the season!

11/12/2024

Busy busy busy, but I'm trying to get some designs made up for Holiday Faire this weekend. Here are a few designs taken from Margaret Guido's book on beads of Anglo Saxon England.

09/23/2024

I haven't got a fully formed idea yet, but I think this color set is going places.