About Quality..

A few words about quality, about how to tell the difference between glass beads and jewellery of good quality and quality below acceptable standards.

Art is in the eye of the beholder certainly. Different people may like different things. What one finds ugly or unacceptable may find another one praising and loving it.

The following is not to judge a particular piece of art. It is to give information to the viewer and potential buyer of glass bead art. It's not so much about art rather than about craftsmanship and quality. It is about giving the buyer some criteria to make up his own mind, thereby enabling him to look at glass art with a different, a more educated eye.

It is like with wine. Nobody can really tell the difference between a good and a poor wine without ever having tasted a good or premium quality and the bad one.

In these days there are a lot of mass produced beads coming into the market and being offered in bead shops or by companies serving just this purpose. They maybe handmade, they maybe even annealed and cleaned properly, but they usually lack the craftsmanship which only can be achieved by many years of training and experience.
This is equally true for beads and jewellery being brought to the market by hobbyists who probably attended an introductory 1 or 2 day class somewhere, purchase the minimum equipment and start creating beads and assembling jewellery a few days after setting up their equipment.
Nothing against beadmaking as a hobby. - It is a great hobby for a lot of people.
But it can be observed that some of these guys offer their art stating it being of the highest quality and meeting the highest standards. This cannot be true after an introductory class obviously. To make things even worse these classes often are offered and executed by somebody not being able to master the basics herself/himself. This is nothing else but ripping off unsuspecting customers. If somebody is offering classes always have a look at the quality of what they offer as their own beads. If you can't see or inspect their own work at all or see it as a small thumbnail image on the Internet only be very suspicious. It's not worth the money.

Purchasing a scalpel and a surgeons table doesn't make you a surgeon, right?

Another aspect is the so much needed experience. If somebody talks of several years of lampworking experience on her/his website this does mean nothing if that experience comprises just a few hours of flameworking per week. It's just to mislead and impress a potential customer with a phony figure.
It only really means something if these years would have been full time (!) working, which means many hours on a daily (!) basis.
Usually this is not being told for a good reason.

The inexperienced viewer and potential buyer being new to this kind of art and the market can easily get carried away by such statements and may purchase really bad quality since he never saw the good stuff so far.

So here follow some examples and explanations showing and comparing images of the good, the bad, and the ugly. It is obvious that some of the following examples are extreme. The real world can be even worse, but usually floats somewhere in between. The images still serve the purpose to keep your eyes peeled and help to make you an informed customer.
These examples will be updated at times to gradually build a nice library.

A detailed flower bead.	A poorly sculptured flower. The petals are plump and thicker at the tips than at the base. This design lacks detail. This easily can happen if the artist is not mastering the heat. While working on one side of the piece the other end is melting together and balling up.
A perfectly attached stringer along the equator of this bead. It is of even diameter and straight. The dots are evenly distributed and of equal size. They stick out of the base bead with approximately half of their size.	There is an uneven stringer around the equator. The diameter is varying and it is not straight. The dots are distorted and of different sizes.
Another perfectly dotted bead. Evenly distributed and sized.	Here are distorted dots with uneven footprints, distributed all over the place, and showing all kind of sizes. Some stick out more than others.
The longitudinal stringers are of the same size and evenly distributed. The ends fully reach to the bead hole and are not distorted.	This is obvious, isn't it? It takes a lot of experience and skills to master what this bead was supposed to be. But this example here would be beginners work.
An exemplary spiral decoration as it should be. The stringer is evenly sized and the decoration looks harmonic.	This shall be an even spiral decoration. Compared to the good one at the left this is graffiti if the worst comes to the worst.
A nice couple of roses on an ivory base bead. The ends of the spirals are tucked in towards the centre. The leaves exhibit structure and detail.	Uneven spirals are hardly to be recognized as flowers. The leaves are uneven and all over the place.
A quite different matter is going on here. The arrow points to remnants of so called bead release in the bead hole. This white or grey material is needed during the process to get the bead off the steel mandrel once finished. But then the bead hole needs to be cleaned thoroughly. Bead release left-overs can stain your wardrobe or even maybe unhealthy if this dust is inhaled. Some importers mislead the customer with a statement like 'This belongs to the process and is proof that it is handmade.' Yeah right! - But that is no excuse for not cleaning, not removing it after the bead is ready.
Here is a whole collection of poor quality issues in one pair of earrings. A  poor wirework - The loop is not round at all and it is marred through the use of unsuitable tools which left deep marks. B  poor wirework again  -  The windings are uneven and the left earring differs from the right. The right windings become larger at the bottom. C1-C2 C3-C4  poor bead crafting  -  The main beads are not round, the top and bottom are not parallel, each bead is not centered, They're lopsided. The line pairs C1-C2 and C3-C4 indicate the real direction of the bead sides. They should be parallel. D poor quality filler beads  -  Cheap Czech fire polished beads instead of quality Austrian faceted crystals E  poor design  -  There is glass on glass. Yes, the black appearing disk shaped beads are made of glass as well. Adjacent beads are grinding on and scratching each other. There maybe even tiny shards coming off with time. Glass-on-glass designs with movable pieces grinding each other worn on the body like jewellery is never a good idea obviously. There should be a softer material in between. A silver cap or disk would have done the job.