Jewelry Arts Classes Study Finer Points of Bead Creations

Fashions in jewelry may come and go, but one element, the bead, has been around for over 100,000 years.

Over the centuries, beads have been used  to symbolize status, values, beliefs. Although strings of beads may easily be purchased “over the counter,” they are still being made, one by one, by craftsmen and hobbyists.

Watchung Hills Regional High School students of Michelle Ravettina’s Jewelry I and II classes recently had the opportunity of seeing a demonstration of bead-making by a foremost practitioner of that art, Jeri Warhaftig.

Warhaftig, whose early morning presentations captivated the amateur artisans, practices as a lawyer for the State of New Jersey, but her spare-time passion is bead-making. Her bead-making grew out of an earlier hobby, porcelain dolls.

Fifteen years ago, when she had difficulty finding small beads to decorate the dolls’ costumes, Warhaftig decided she would learn how to make the  beads herself. Thus began a long-term, all-absorbing study of the techniques of bead-making, and in an avocation that led  her beyond that hobby to teaching about beads and even writing two elegantly illustrated texts on the subject, the latest of which is “Creating Glass Beads,” on Lark  Crafts and published by Sterling Publishing Company, New York.

Her two early-morning presentations, during which she would show students how to make three types of beads, meant she would carry in raw materials (many glass rods of various colors, small steel rods), and equipment (including a torch, tanks of oxygen ands propane, a kiln and filtered eyeglasses).

All the while she was producing lovely samples, Warhaftig talked about where to get materials, how to access information about bead-making events online, and personal reminiscences. Effortlessly, she produced one beautiful specimen after another, demonstrating the various techniques, admonishing about precautions and important safety concerns.

When onlookers murmured about the seemingly perfect specimens she produced, Warhaftig told them with pride that one of her beads had taken a trip on the space shuttle Endeavor, on astronaut Mark Kelly’s last trip (both Kelly and Warhaftig are from West Orange.)

Naturally, an artisan of Warhaftig’s caliber seeks perfection in each product. But even beads that do not meet her high standards as, for example those to be photographed for her books, are not discarded, but  find a home. They are sent periodically to the non-profit group Beads of Courage.

That is an organization with which students are also very familiar. Beads made by students in their jewelry classes (by a much simpler process than that used by Warhaftig) are donated to the children’s wards of various local hospitals. The colors of the beads will symbolize various qualities. Blue beads symbolize calmness, trust, loyalty, confidence; red beads denote energy, strength, love. Yellow beads denote joy, optimism, hope, and so on.  The beads may be distributed one at a time by nurses whenever the child has shown achievement, bravery, an improvement in health. Or they may be strung together by their creators as Strings of Strength. (Both names are federally registered trademarks.)

As Warhaftig shaped the various types of beads, she also spoke of professions which require  that skill, scientific glass blowing, for one, and art glass.  And she urged them to visit the Corning Museum of Glass in Corning, N.Y.

Few of the students who watched the demonstration will ever attain the bead-making proficiency of  Warhaftig, but they will have learned that, like the speaker, they can have a passion as well as a vocation. Either facet can be a way of giving back to society, the speaker said.