To briefly introduce myself, I am the Beadmaker. I started in a hobby of Living History, simply put, in my spare time I am a viking. This is fun, interesting and for someone with broad interests a world of knowledge and skills and amazement about how a world of beautiful things could be made about 1000 years ago. From that one golden bead, which, with today’s knowledge and skills, is still difficult to manufacture to enormous wood carvings, ships, churches and of course many objects made of glass. An enormous craftsmanship in the various crafts of the time.
I have been doing the hobby of living history for over 10 years now and in that time I have made various wanderings within the crafts. With always a knife on your belt, woodcarving is very easy to reach, yet in practice it is not easy to make beautiful carvings and I have not really come up with more than a few artfully cut twigs. After a workshop making glass beads, which was given in the medieval yard ‘De Bergkamp’, the flame that melts the glass has awakened in me. The almost magical moment when the glass liquefies and turns into a bead like thick syrup around a steel pin has awakened my interest in glass beads and glass in the early Middle Ages.
After purchasing a starter set for making glass beads and a bottle of gas, I started making my first beads. I have spent many evenings behind the hothead burner and have learned by trying a lot what glass does when molten and what does not. After taking a seat behind a burner with an oxygen concentrator next to it (a device that takes oxygen from the air and supplies it to a burner) I was immediately sold and I bought a Bethlehem Burners Alpha with a 5 liter per minute oxygen concentrator.
Through the making of beads at home and the hobby of living history/experimental archeology, the desire to make beads in an authentic way has also slowly grown. In 2018 I received the book “Perlemageren fra Ribe. Historien, materialerne og teknikkerne” from my girlfriend, which was the inspiration for actually making an authentic bead furnace. The book is written in Danish which is not a language I am really at home in but many translations of parts have resulted in building a bead oven.
And it didn’t work. Slight stress, I had signed up for an event where I would make glass beads for the public, in an authentic way…
After more research I built an furnace that should also have worked without bellows, but that didn’t work either. So… I made a set of bellows. That worked somewhat. I spoke to someone who casts bronze brooches at events in an authentic way and has a set of well-functioning bellows that he made himself. I’ve collected tip and tricks and made bellow set number 2. I went to the craft market with furnace number 2 and bellows 2, which was held in the medieval yard ‘De Bergkamp’, where also my first contact with making glass beads was. I made my first authentically crafted beads in February 2019.
From the craft market I have become an active beadmaker in an authentic way. In the meantime, in 2019 I made beads at various early medieval markets and in the meantime I have also learned a lot. Both from building bead furnaces and making bellows. I am now on my 5th furnace and made my first set of bellows in May. The coming winter I will make a new set of bellows and the furnaces I use now can be even better and different.. the experimental part of the re-experience never stops.
Check the agenda when you can meet me at one of the markets or send me an email if you have any questions or wishes.