Jewelry Making

We got the new Fire Mountain Gems catalog in the mail the other day. Fire Mountain is a fairly decent wholesaler of beads, gems, jewelry findings, and other beader related things. We’ve used them quite a bit and would recommend them for their excellent customer service, at least for the orders we’ve done.

Anyhow, featured on the front of their June-September 2006 catalog were Cane Beads Assortments. So what are these colorful cane beads anyhow? They are actually furnace glass beads made using Italian glassworking techniques. They get their Furnace name from the fact that they require a large (fairly large anyhow) glass furnace and an annealing kiln to make.

They get their “Cane” name because they are made using several colored canes of glass that are fused together on a mandrel. The resulting long fused glass piece is then cut across into various shapes and sizes. Cane beads can be cylindrical, square, rectangular and triangular in shape. The resulting beads have what look like vertical stripes because of the many different colored canes fused together.

Beginning jewelry makers often use cane beads in longer necklaces that feature pieces of random size, shaps and color. It seems to be much easier to go this route rather than try to find beads of the exact same size and color scheme (and they’re great for beginners because you don’t have to worry about matching). They are often sold in complimentary color lots and sizes so that you can just pick up a handful and string them up.

This particular assortment pictured above is from Fire Mountain and made by glass bead artist David Christensen. The package scheme is called “Crayon” and features between 280 and 580 glass cane beads per pound.