First the old.....
I had a lovely day which began with the press launch of the new William and Judith Bollinger jewellery gallery at The Victoria and Albert Museum.
It was an joy to see all the beautiful jewellery now on display. there is some wonderful work which goes right from 500BC to the modern day with some great contemporary pieces.
I felt let down in one major area though- almost no beads or beadwork! I spoke to the curator about it and he said they did have some rosaries (which weren't out as they didn't fit the story they were trying to tell...) and if I looked around I'd see some beads on some things. Such a shame that once again beads are the poor relation of jewellery- so disappointing.
But I continued looking around and being dazzled and there to my delight was a piece by Axel Russmeyer! (or click here to see some of his work) Some beads and some 'proper beadwork' at last, so all was not lost.
It's strange (but no surprise) that they managed to find lots of room for snuff boxes, sword covers etc and only room for one piece of beadwork.

It seems such a shame that beadwork still isn't highly regarded- I told the curator all about Bead Magazine and I think he was shocked that there was such a market for beads and people interested in them- well, we all know better! He even used the sentence 'No-one is interested in beads'. I mean how do you even respond to that?

So, what can we do about it? Simple, the main thing is never be ashamed to say we're jewellery makers.
I hear so many people say "I'm a beader", "It's only beads", "I just string beads" etc. Stop doing that! Say you're a jewellery designer, maker, artist... If we don't give ourselves the same respect as someone who works in metal, then we can't expect anyone else outside the beadworld to.

The next step to getting beadwork recognised is- get your work out there. Enter bead competitions by all means- they're great things- but also enter jewellery and art competitions as well. The more we work at getting beads ranked along side other forms of jewellery and art the better it will be for us all.

Ok, rant over- now onto something new...

I next headed back home to work on my latest project. For a few days now I've been battling to reproduce a beaded bead idea I had and it's just not working! So annoying. But I know if I put in some more hours I'll get there in the end.. hopefully.
So far I've moved from brick to peyote stitch and then onto right-angle weave and fitted in some netting along the way.

Some of my samples are pictured, and we won't go into just how much some of them resemble my Peyote Bobbles, for some reason they just keep veering towards new version of them!