Glass Beads

Glass beads have been in use for over 3000 years. Available in a variety of colors, sizes, and shapes, they are most often found in costume and fashion jewelry, but look stunning when set in gold or silver jewelry. Some cultures have even used glass beads as currency.

There are many types of glass beads like cathedral, dichromic glass, East Indian, fancy, luster, metallic glass, mosaic beads, synthetic cat's eye, Islamic eye beads, letter beads, Chinese lamp work, Picasso beads, Rhinestone rondelles, and glass seed beads among others.

The processes jewelers use to create glass beads include kiln forming, furnace, lamp work, kiln casting, and cold working processes. The Chevron Venetian glass creating process is the most reputable. In the lamp work process, jewelers wind molten glass around a copper wire, heated over a lamp. In mosaic style, specialists’ fuse-colored segments of glass to form a glass cane. Blowing is a technique where the glassmaker blows into a glass tube with a molten globule of glass inside, over a flame.