Before I begin making a bead, I make the floral cane (or a rod of glass) that I cut up into little individual glass flowers called murrine which I set into the bead.
I love flowering trees so I have been focusing on making apple, pear and crab apple blossoms for the past year. We have a few apple trees in our backyard and last spring I photographed every stage of their spectacular transformation from dormancy to full bloom.
Then, over the fall and winter I sketched details of the buds, flowers, leaves and branches to work out the design of the floral cane and the layout of the branches and leaves on the bead.
Next step is to translate this three dimensional sketch into a cross-sectional plan of the floral cane detailing the colours, layers and shapes of the stamen and petals.
The cane is built up gradually in the flame of the torch using layers of molten glass on a steel mandrel, beginning with the core of the flower, then the stamen and petals. Heat control is very important to keep the bundle of glass hot enough not to crack but also cool enough to retain its shape as the glass is added and the flower begins to take shape.
The last step is to superheat the bundle of glass and pull it into a long rod of glass that is between 3mm-10mm so that an assortment of different sized flowers can be cut from the cane.
After the floral cane has cooled, I cut it into small slices. Each slice is a flower that I set into my base bead and then cover with a layer of clear glass. Here is the final bead......
