What are “lampwork” beads versus regular beads?
Lampwork beads are handcrafted beads of varying shapes and colors that are perfectly suited for your jewelry design projects. Lampwork beads are a colorful way to add distinctive designs to jewelry and other craft projects. Many people who are new to beading sometimes confuse artisan-made hand-crafted beads with imported mass-produced lower quality glass beads from India, China, Turkey and other countries. Almost invariably, hand-crafted beads are higher quality and offer far more unique designs and diversity of colors and textures than mass-produced beads. In their own right, handcrafted beads are precious gems and timeless creations because they’re individually made by many a skilled artisan whose passion is to create distinctive works of glass art. Artisan made lampwork is usually more expensive, and kiln-annealed so it won’t break as easily. Mass-produced beads, however, are oftentimes only cooled in fiber blankets, sand, vermiculite or sometimes, nothing at all. This cools beads w
