The following are snippets of an online conversation on the subject of buying lampwork beads, taken from The Mellow Bead, an eBay discussion group founded by Laura Bracken:

First and foremost...be sure to look at the holes. Sometimes the seller may hide them by stringing them closely but you can find part of a hole. Make sure they're puckered and not sharp or they'll end up fraying your beading wire.

A huge pet peeve of mine, but not a "sellable" issue is chill marks. You may see beads that have a sort of circular pattern on the glass. What happens is when a bead is pressed in a mold, the brass freezes the glass and leaves a pattern. Then the artist is supposed to put the bead back in the flame and firepolish the chill marks out. This happens wayyy to much...sellers leaving chill marks. It just tells me that the artist in question doesn't really care about the finished product that much.. so what else did they not want to do?

Wonkiness! LOL Look how the beads are laying, where is the hole? Sure wonkiness really won't affect a bracelet too much, but earrings..you can spot a wonky earring a mile away

Jen

I'm no expert...YET...but one thing that always gets me is when I see dots or stringer that is SURE to snap off. I bought a set once that was absolutely beautiful...but when I received it...several spirals of stringer had snapped right off. You can't always tell in the auction pics...but try to see if the stringer or the raised dots have a "mounded" shape. The bottom of them should seal tightly to the surface of the bead. If dots still look like globes or stringer decoration still looks like a tube of glass resting on the surface of the bead...well, good chance it'll pop right off.

Dana

Ahh great point Dana. "Undercut" is what those dots/stringer are called.

Jen

This is such a hard topic! I have always been really anal about my beads and other peoples too - lol! But lately I'm thinking, other than undercuts, bad holes, proper annealing, and scum (greyish brown striations through the clear glass on an encased beads) - is anything else really "bad" or is it up to interpretation?

I wonder what everyone else thinks. I've seen lots of sloppy beads on ebay which I would never think of selling, but people still buy them. It all depends on the person - I could show my beads to my husband and he'll pick out every minute technical error there is to be found in it and the same bead to someone else and they'll think it's just the most beautiful bead and they must have it! See what I mean, I know my DH is critical but people like him and me are not the majority population. Most people don't see or care about that tiny bubble that got trapped on accident or the dot that is slightly off - they just know if they like it or not.

So I guess my point is that I agree with the need for good holes, no undercuts, no scum, holes properly cleaned and proper annealing - but other than that - can we really dictate what people should look for in a bead?

-Tina

Tina, I think you hit the nail on the head. Other than poorly constructed beads or poorly pressed beads, most tips would be only to enlighten a lampwork bead buyer as to what to pay attention to. Some things that might be considered 'bad' can be turned into a something absolutely beautiful when done the right way. The chill marks is the first thing that comes to mind.

Serena

Another thing is the pressed beads, say a square.. one side has the "frame" and all other 3 sides don't have it.

JMC

I was a wee bit confused by carbon marks, but I have seen beads with dark smudgy areas like encased smoke... ha ha ha! And assume the lampworker burnt that part of the bead.

Laura

Laura, the scum or encased smoke is a product of the glass having impurities in it - which burns - so you are right in a way.

Tina

I have to put in my 2 cents here...

I'm sure you all have seen the imported lampwork, some of which appears to be quite good. Be careful. I was just talking to someone who said there were florals on the bead, and they were actually "painted" on--not even glass! There was no way you could tell that from the picture.

On ebay, you can check where they are getting the item from, if it's China or India and you are getting a lot of the same kind of beads, they are probably imports. They do have their place in our little beading world, but if you're looking for the type of lampwork you see here on TMB, you will be disappointed.

Another thing you can try to look for is leftover bead release residue in the hole. It's actually dangerous to inhale this stuff over time, so make sure the bead holes are cleaned. If you do get some that aren't clean, make sure you clean them out under water so the dust doesn't fly up into your lungs!

Rachel

That's a good point about the bead release stuff, Rachel! I rarely receive beads that haven't been cleaned--maybe 2 or 3 times. How do you get that stuff out without a dremel?

ShaLayne

I don't have a dremel, ShaLayne. Well, let me clarify. I have a dremel...but no diamond file attachment yet. So, I use a bead reamer...just a little wooden handled round file. I have to work hard to get it out...and sometimes I can't get every last speck no matter how hard I elbow grease them!

Dana

Tip for bead release... When you're taking your bead off the mandrel slide it back and forth on the mandrel under water spin at every angle and voila! If there's a tiny piece of BR on the bead, then I'll use my reamer.

Jen

I don't use a dremel any more, but I used to. I now use a special brand of bead release that rinses very clean by just soaking the bead in water and running a mandrel through it a few times. You can also use a small *real* pipe cleaner (the metal ones) that you can find at tobacconists, but I don't know if they have small enough ones to fit in the 1/16th holes.

Rachel

I tell ya, I hope that I don't have this experience again - the beads are burnt on one side. They are pressed beads. How could a seller purposefully put the non-burnt sides up in the picture and then have the nerve to sell them?!?!?!

So, my "what to look for when buying lampwork" tip is: see if they show BOTH sides of the beads!

Donna

Donna, I would email the seller and request a refund and send the beads back. There are many that use Photoshop to doctor up their boro pictures (by increasing the contrast to make the colors seem to "pop" more) and it seems so foolish to me--when someone gets the actual beads, they aren't going to be happy and that means no return shopping.

Anita

Yeah...I just bought over $100 worth of boro beads from a seller who TOTALLY doctored up their pics! Got the beads today...what a disappointment!

ShaLayne

I'm sorry to hear about that doctoring, ShaLayne, I look through the boro listings and just cringe sometimes---even some well-reputed sellers seem to do it sometimes! I just can't sell a bead that doesn't look as good out of the box as it does in the picture, just doesn't seem right.

Anita

So explain a bit more about encasing. A very popular seller had a lot of sets up one week where there were LOTS of bubbles in the encasing. It doesn't seem like I've seen so many bubbles in his beads before. Plunged=supposed to be bubbles, right? But encased=not always, not supposed to, what??

Sarah

Sarah, about the bubbles in the encasing, in soft glass we try not to have too many bubbles, though when melting layers together it is hard not to have a few. There's nothing structurally wrong with small bubbles being inside encasing, but if it looks bad to you, just don't buy the bead.

Anita

Good encasing IMO, is not supposed to have bubbles in it, with the exception of plunged flowers. Most of the time, this is an almost impossible task to achieve, so a few small ones are acceptable...at least to me. That's just what I have learned.

That is of course, unless you are buying beads that have been done with the baking soda technique. Then you will have LOTS of bubbles in the glass.

Karen