Glass bead making

Glass at a temperature high enough to make it workable, or "ductile", is laid down or wound around a steel wire or mandrel coated in a clay slip called "bead release".

The wound bead, while still hot, may be further shaped by manipulating with graphite, wood, stainless steel, brass, tungsten or marble tools and paddles.

Evidence of large-scale drawn-glass bead making has been found by archeologists in India, at sites like Arekamedu dating to the 2nd century CE.

The resulting beads were cooked or rolled in hot sand to round the edges without melting the holes closed; were sieved into sizes; and, usually, strung onto hanks for sale.

Seed beads, so called due to their tiny, regular size, are produced in the modern day from machine-extruded glass.

Seed beads vary in shape; though most are round, some, such as Miyuki delicas, resemble small tubes.

The beads again are rolled in hot sand to remove flashing and soften seam lines.

One "feed" of a hot rod might result in 10–20 beads, and a single operator can make thousands in a day.

A variant of the wound glass bead making technique, and a labor-intensive one, is what is traditionally called lampworking.

In the Venetian industry, where very large quantities of beads were produced in the 19th century for the African trade, the core of a decorated bead was produced from molten glass at furnace temperatures, a large-scale industrial process dominated by men.

Italian glass blowing techniques, such as latticinio and zanfirico, have been adapted make beads.

[5] (Soda-lime glass can be blown at the end of a metal tube, or, more commonly wound on the mandrel to make a hollow bead, but the former is unusual and the latter not a true mouth-blown technique.)