What is Lampworking? Handmade Glass Beads?

The Art of Lampworking – Handmade Glass Beads

Lampworking isn’t making pretty shades for household lamps? Of course it’s not! That would make far too much sense, wouldn’t it?

“Lampwork” is making handmade glass beads for custom-made jewelry and other wonderful stuff.

The art of lampwork is actually the process of melting a glass rod over a torch until it reaches a molten state. The red-hot glass is slumped over a steel rod (called a mandrel), and wrapped in a spherical motion until the desired size and shape are reached.

Wow, that’s a pretty simple description of a process that has endless possibilities of shape, color, and design.

It will take more than a single excerpt to cover everything involved in lampworking. There are numerous topics to address. We have to discuss the safety issues, of course. Then there will be the tools involved, preparing the mandrels, the types of glass, the shaping process (that’ll be several posts by itself), the kiln annealing, and lots more.

The best place to begin will be with the history of lampwork. The term itself has evolved from a time when glass was actually melted over the flame of an oil lamp. We’ve come far, but handmade beads predate contemporary techniques by thousands of years.