Larry Brickman class 2005

Larry Brickman has been making glass beads for 10 years now.  For us North American Lampwork artists, that's like saying Larry is one of the granddaddies of contemporary glass art beadmaking.  Before he got into glass he was a nuclear engineer with the U.S. Navy.  Larry has an amazing background, he has traveled the world & has become one of the busiest Lampwork teachers around.  We were very lucky to have him come up to Edmonton as he holds a wealth of information in this discipline.  

Here's Larry Brickman working with a very long mandrel (rod) which enables him to use both hands to steady the bead.  This is such a great technique when you're working on very big beads because it can get awfully heavy if you're only using one hand to hold up the rod & continuously rotate the glass.  Some of Larry's beads take him up to 3 hours to make.  This particular bead, called the "bridge" bead, one of his signature beads, on average takes about 2 hours to make - crazy!  And this particular demo was a first for Larry, he's never done a demo of his bridge bead for a class before so that was pretty exciting!

This is one of Larry's bridge beads that he brought up to show us.  The silver headpin & little bits of silver inside were added by the incredibly talented Kate McKinnon, who's a well-known silversmith in the States.  This bead is massive & super cool &, although he wasn't selling this particular one, I think this kind of bead runs around $200 - $250 U.S. 

Here's Brickman making a Warring States Bead, another bead that he is famous for & also another first for a demo in class.  This bead is so cool because it has a fantastic history - the original Warring States glass beads were made back in 500 B.C. in China and were symbols of royalty & thought to bring about luck.  This contemporary version is just as impressive because of its precision & size. 

An already finished Warring States Bead & HUGE to boot!  I love this bead.  He brings this around with him as sort of a trademark bead for us to gawk over...absolutely gorgeous! 

Here is a photo of the beads I made.  The top left hand corner bead is my version of the Bridge bead - it actually turned out o.k. but it's about 1/2 the size of Larry's!  The upper row of Warring States beads are also about half the size of Larry's, but when I was making them I thought, 'my goodness these are big' - it wasn't until the next day when they were pulled out of the kiln that I realized that beside Larry's beads they were miniatures!  The flatter beads were just beads I goofed around making because Larry brought in a bunch of presses (bead stamps) for us to try.  You make your bead & then squish it into a mold to get a cool shape (I actually work with bead presses a lot, but I tried these 2 presses because I haven't tried the shapes before).  The other beads are bubble beads attempted after he demonstrated them.  These are big for me too, & I really like the size of them.  

So the class was a lot of fun & very interesting.  I don't know if I'll go really big like Larry, but it was fun to try!