Just bead it

Story by JOHN STANG

The Daily Inter Lake

Kalispell's Maureen Burden taught herself how to do lampwork, a glass art that dates back to ancient Egypt or Renaissance Italy

The bracelet's glass beads are tiny. Maybe the size of the tip of your little finger. Maybe a bit smaller.

The beads look like little planets with ridges, hills and spires - all from different colors of melted glass painstakingly dabbed on their surfaces.

The beads are then strung together in bracelets and necklaces.

This is lampwork - a glass art dating back to Renaissance Italy or ancient Egypt, depending on your point of view.

It took Maureen Burden of Kalispell a sometimes frustrating year to teach herself to make decent lampwork jewelry.

"I still have much to learn compared to other artists out there. It's amazing what some people can do with glass. I haven't scratched the surface yet," Burden said.

She began selling her lampwork jewelry six months ago, and recently put her items on display at the Sassafras arts and crafts cooperative store in downtown Kalispell.

Burden, 43, grew up in Kalispell, often working after school at her grandfather's and father's jewelry store. Her father was a jewelry maker, and his work fascinated her enough that she took a couple of jewelry-making classes in junior high. The family store closed when Burden was in high school.

She and her husband, Philip, began a family that now consists of four girls and two boys - ages 3 through 15. While in her 30s, Burden, who loves making things with her hands, took up basket weaving, eventually becoming a professional. But she got bored after a few years since the company buying her baskets wanted her to mass-produce just one type. So Burden quit.

Then 4 1/2 years ago, Burden and her sister-in-law visited a gallery in Chicago, and she saw her first lampwork beads.

"I was amazed with the different things you could do with the pieces. … No two beads are alike, and every lampwork bead maker has their own style," Burden said.

The art form obsessed her.

"It was something that I felt the need to do," Burden said.

She bought every book and magazine on lampwork that she could find. She read each over and over again. She practiced four to six hours each evening after homeschooling her children.

Lampwork's origins date back to when people discovered that they could use fire to make glass, with the Egyptians creating furnaces and long, thin metal rods to mold and decorate glass vessels. Glassmaking and glassblowing evolved during the next few thousand years.

Fast forward to the 13th century. Italians became leery about the fire hazards from glassmaking and exiled their glassmakers to Murano, a city on five islands next to Venice. Murano became the world center and cutting edge of glassmaking.

Meanwhile, traditional glassblowing proved to be too cumbersome for creating small, precise glass artifacts. In the 15th century, Murano's experts began to force narrow streams of air through the flames of oil lamps, which softened tiny bits of glass enough to make them malleable. Hyperventilation soon became an occupational hazard, and human lungs were replaced by hand bellows and then by foot bellows.

The use of an oil lamp led to the term "lampwork."

Today, lampwork artists still use thin metal rods to shape the glass while using blowtorches and kilns for the heat.

In fact, the torch flames intimidated Burden when she started. The first few months were slow and frustrating as she tried to mold tiny spheres with smooth round holes in the middle. Her children encouraged her, even when the results were rough and crude. Slowly, she began adding color and texture to the spheres with glass squiggles and bumps and points.

"It's was just an exciting feeling when you take something out of the kiln and see its beautiful," she said.

She hopes to eventually tackle more complicated forms like birds or fairies.

Finally, Burden built up the nerve to take her stuff to art shows, and she received good feedback.

Six months ago, she decided to try to start selling her beadwork. "I wanted to get my work out there and exposed. And I can't just have all this just sitting around the house," Burden said.

So she approached Sassafras, a cooperative that screens artists' works before it agrees to sell them.

Burden said: "Every woman loves jewelry. It's an outward expression of who you are."