I took the afternoon off work today, and went to the exhibition part of the 1995 Embellishment conference, which is being billed as “The International Bead & Button Show.” (I just didn’t have the money to register for the conference proper, or the classes—maybe next year.) It’s got good credentials; it’s organized by the company that does the Houston International Quilt Festival, and sponsored by BEAD & Button magazine.
The exhibition hall was full of really killer stuff: tons of things I’ve heard people talk about in crafting newsgroups, and some stuff I’ve never seen or heard of. There were booths with tons of antique and modern buttons (including the famous Tender Buttons, from New York city), lampworking and metalworking materials, polymer clay, and beads, beads, beads, beads, beads—every kind I could imagine, and many I’d never have dreamed about.
I don’t have a really good, organized feel for what I saw, there was just too much of it. I can only talk about some items that reached out and grabbed me:
- Long bargello canework beads in Fimo, made by Laura Oakes of Duncanville, Texas. One set was made into a neckpiece called “Autumn Flame” that I’d love to wear myself.
- A wall hanging done in seed beads, of two Chinese dragons playing “fireball tennis”—the dragons in opposite corners, with an orange-and-red fireball in the exact center between them.
- A different kind of snap pliers and snaps, made by a German manufacturer called “Prym.” This beats the Dritz pliers and pearlized snaps hands down; the pliers can easily handle grommets, rivets, and decorative metal and plastic snaps as well as the ordinary pearlized snaps.
- A peacock feather stitched onto a dealer’s bolero jacket, done in copper and anodized niobium seed beads.
- A series of embellished quilts done by a woman living in Jerusalem, with a theme of Paul Simon lyrics. The “Kodachrome” quilt (Amish in the feel of the colors, very strong and clear colors with a black ground) blew me away—the center medallion was the iris of a camera lens done in log-cabin type strips; that was superimposed on the New Mexican sun symbol, and surrounding the whole affair was a pattern reminiscent of a TV test pattern. Then around the edge of the quilt was a white inset fabric strip, running from an appliquéd human eye and bounding off and through a series of inserted gray shapes. I looked at it for several minutes and finally realized that it was a cutaway diagram of the light path through an SLR camera, and the gray shapes were the mirrors and lenses inside the camera! The quilter added a lyrical quote from the song, done in white buttons. She also had a mini-quilt (“Still Crazy After All These Years”) and two other full-size wall quilts (“Think Too Much” and “The Boxer”). Each one had a quote from the appropriate song done in buttons as a part of the quilt design. (Can you tell I’m a long-time Paul Simon fan?)
- A dealer with light switch wall plates on which she’d wrapped sheets of Fimo designs. I thought seriously about buying one that was rows and rows of faces.
- Beadweaving looms that don’t force you to use a particular width apart for stringing the warp threads—this dealer has a system where you can use the size of beads you’re going to make the piece with, so the thread distance is matched to the size of the piece. There’s an article about her in the current BEAD & Button—the article on beaded hatbands. She had a couple of the pieces from the article with her on display, as well as a huge seed-bead pectoral (Shasta daisies on a black ground) she had half-done for demonstration purposes.
These are just the few things I managed to scribble down on the back of my program—I wish I’d had the time and money to go to some classes (not to mention the skill level to make it be of benefit to me—but I hope that’s gonna come).
There were ten special exhibits in connection with the show: Contemporary Handmade Glass Beads, Embellished Textiles, Buttons of History, Polymer Clay Today, Small Wonders (mini-quilt competition), Gleaming Treasures (bead & button competition), BeadAttitudes (one-woman show featuring body ornaments based on other cultures’ religious icons), Out of Africa (beads, fabrics, and decorative crafts), Beaded Beauties (antique embellishment), Teacher’s Showcase (conference faculty show), and Austrian Buttons. Eight glass bead artists, out on the hall floor, rotated live demonstrations of bead making every hour and a half.
A green argument sinks below the unintended screwdriver. Fnord.
