Books< Go back

ANATOLIAN GLASS BEAD MAKING / THE FINAL TRACES OF GLASS MAKING IN THE MEDITERRANEAN REGION

Türkiye Turing ve Otomobil Kurumu yayını, 1988, İstanbul (ISBN 975-7641-03-0)

GLASS BEADS
Anatolian Glass Bead Making

The Final Traces of Three Millennia of
Glass Making in the Mediterranean Region

Prof. Önder Küçükerman

Published by the Turkish Touring and Automobile Association
Photographs, plans and illustrations, Prof. Önder Küçükerman
Translated by Maggie Quigley Pinar
Film, printing, binding, Apa Ofset Basımevi Sanayi ve Ticaret A. Ş. İstanbul
1st edition, 1988
ISBN 975-7641-03-0

CONTENTS

FOREWORD
Glass: Out of the flame, shaped by the Craftsman's hand, 9

INTRODUCTION
What is a glass bead? Glass beads...How vitrous? 11

I- THE HERITAGE
Glass and the glass bead, 16. Documents, 18. Tradition in glass making: The search for the natural, 20. The glass bead: A technical analysis, 25. Ancient glass beads and how they were made, 25. Pressing, 27. Press moulding and piercing, 30. Cast moulding. The cold metal fusion technique, 30. Tubing, 33. Core winding, 33.

II - THE LIVING TRADITION
State of the craft, 40. How glass bead making survived, 41. Where to find glass beads, 42 . Light glows in the darkness, 44. Glass workshops through the millennia, 47. Under the dawb, 49. The total art, 52. The heat transfer mechanism in the traditional glass furnace, 53. The raw materials of the Anatolian glass bead maker, 74. The glass bead maker and the chemical properties of glass, 76. Ancient formula for network formers, 77. Tinting, 78. Shades of transparency, 78. Clear glass, 80. Blue, 81. White, 83. Yellow, 85. Green, 89. Red, 91. The bead makers's raw materials, 93. Towards the point of no return, 95.

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY, 100
Footnotes, 101

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

FOREWORD

Glass:
... Out of the flame, shaped by the Craftsman's hand…

The glass craftsman, as he open door of his furnace, is displaying skills which have been inextricably linked with the flame -his energy source- for millennia. What takes shape between the heat of the latter and the manipulative skills of the former is the substance - glass. There is a curious balance between the fire, the craftsman and his product. Fire melts glass, making it ductile as water, and the craftsman teases this into a from, working as it cools. It is that imperceptable creative instant that emerges from the blending of these three elements - the moment when glass takes on its definitive shape, that remains the age-long secret of the glass worker's skill. It is towards the success of that creative moment that generations of glass workers have worked, passing on their skills, unrecorded as oral literature.

Only a few catalysts act as variables to this traditionalised craft ritual, little else has changed in its performance through the ages. Indeed the basic ingredients of glass are neither transparent nor brilliant as glass, but must wonder at their own transformation in the melting flame of the glass maker's furnace and the skilled hands of the craftsman as, cooling, they become that brilliant, clear or tinted phenomenon we call glass.

There are a number of crafts whose techniques are of considerable interest to us now, which have survived unchanged for millennia. Many of these have, throughout their considerable pasts, undergone vast technical development. Glass making is one such craft, in which extremely interesting technical advancement has taken place consistently over the millenia.

And yet there has been little basic change in the principles of the craft. Perhaps the most notable transformation is in scale - from the small, primitive workshops of the ancient world to the giant industry of our time.

The traditional glass workshop is an extraordinary place. Dimly lit but for the flare of moulten glass and the glow from the open furnace, it is only after some time that one notices the craftsman, silently and swiftly labouring over the moulten, ductile glass material which flares up from the crucibles. Such workshops give a general impression of disorganised haste, but actually the glass workers are engaged in a series of highly complicated and coordinated movements. The creation of glass is a highly charged process, relying totally on systematic speed for its success. Hot, moulten glass is taken from the crucible and shaped while cooling. The success of the process depends largely on the glass maker's use of the tiny space of time between the transformation of the metal from a moulten to a cooled state, when all the manipulation must be completed.
This in broad terms is the basic process behind glass making, whether it is carried out under primitive conditions, or with the aid of the most complex technology. Hence, whatever the circumstances, there are certain unchanging, basic principles to this process.

Glass is primarily a transparent material. That is to say, in its pure form it is colourless and non refractive. Glass bead making employs a related technique producing, of necessity, however, a non-vitreous material. Transparency, in fact, is something which came to glass making only relatively late in the development of the craft.

The time element is also an important factor in the creation of glass, which is liquified at extremly high temperatures and takes its final form an extremely short time after the initial melting of raw materials. What is more, there is rarely time to make alterations to the basic structure during the creative process.
These two elements, instant formation and transparency have often provided for extremly interesting structural and aesthetic qualities in glass. But above all, it is the profusion of form which one sees emerge from the furnace, shaped with such infinite skill and effort, which inspires the greatest awe.

Glass, today a common commodity, was considered almost magical only centuries ago. Even in this century, just 60-70 years ago it was an relatively expensive luxury.

What can have been the source of this 'magical' aspect of glass? The answer to this is surely the extraordinary qualities which glass shares with no other material.

Just imagine, when we mix together such common materials as sand, lime and soda, and heat them to over 900-100°, they become a molten, viscous compound. This is then extracted from the crucible in which it has been melted and shaped by a number of techniques, using various utensils. When cooled, this material finally will become a lustrous object which is either transparent or tinted.

In short, the glass maker of the ancient Mediterranean and the modern industrial exponent of up-to-date glass techniques alike are the twins to the fire of the glass furnace, no matter how different the science of the classical Near Eastern craftsman from that of modern glass technology, and no matter how primitive his methods may seem to us now.

INTRODUCTION

What is a glass bead?

This book studies the glass bead craft as it survives in Anatolia today. The approach is, of necessity, one which aims to document the craft before its final disappearance. It is a curious craft which may, at this very moment, be living out its final hours as the glass bead makers, with no-one to train in their stead, perform what may be their last, well-memorised, semi-instinctive creative act.

It is precisely this possibility which inspired this detailed study of the latest creations of this craft.
The first problem was, then, how to tackle the available material. Would - it be better to base the study on the laboured words of the master craftsman, working from memory at a craft he learnt at his father's knee, or to use the objects themselves as the basis for an analysis of the bead making process? Undoubtedly the latter, as the craftsman, engrossed in the practical process of bead making over the decades, has difficulty in verbalising his activities, and explaining his experiments, and indeed would find any attempt to do so unnecessary.

So the analytical approach to the craft seemed the only way to interprete what, to the craftsman, was so natural as to be almost inexpressable.

There is, of course, another factor and that is the craftsman's natural reluctance to reveal what to him is the 'key' to a process which has become his own interpretation of the craft. This has long been the case with craftsmen of all kinds. Worse still, for our purposes, is the craftsman -also a common phenomenon- who does not even recognise that such a key exists, so close is he to the creative process.

So it was primarily the analytical approach that made some extremely interesting observations on the living art of bead making possible in the course of this study.

Seemingly a simple craft, at first glance, on closer study the small details of bead making reveal it to have been, traditionally, an art from which sometimes produced artefacts of extraodinary uniqueness and high quality. We can see this in the careful use of technique by the bead maker, who pursues even the finest detail with great skill.

Unfortunately, the craft now labours under the disadvantage shared by all the traditional crafts, of being based on the largely unrecorded craft tradition. Its modern exponents are struggling to justify the oral information relayed to them by their fathers, grandfathers or peers, what they remember of the craft as performed by their elders, and their own skills, in terms of a craft with a place in the contemporary world.
In trying to adapt the traditional skills, the craftsman finds himself increasingly faced with having to modify his craft to cope with conditions hostile to its survival. Indeed, some craftsmen are even at the stage of lowering their creative standards completely, as far as the link between the fabric and the tradition of glass bead making is concerned. So while the furnace and techniques remain apparently identical to those of the ancient master bead maker, the contemporary artefact coming out of the kiln is scarcely glass at all, if anything it could almost be described as semi-vitreous, in place of true, traditional glass.

In other words, the core of the technique seems to have disappeared; what remains is this semi-vitreous substance.

Still classified as a kind of glass making, the end product of which is the glass bead, this process is in actual fact one which tends to result in semivitrified or de-vitrified objects, as it often disregards recognisable technical limits beyond which it is difficult to identify a product as glass at all. Occasionally we may define the end product as ceramic, or even as composite in nature.

And yet there is no doubt that the making of glass beads is essentialy, traditionally the most intriguing of glass making techniques, and one applied with great skill.

Research has shown that the source of glass making lies in the Mediterranean region, but as a craft, it became widespread in a number of regions where sand and timber - essential for the making of glass - were readily, available. Highly resinous pinewood was a major source of fuel for glass makers, owing to the high levels of energy produced by this timber. Meanwhile, of course, pottery and glazing techniques were closely related to glass making. It might even be assumed that the first so-called glass was something between glass and glaze which might have come out of an overheated kiln, turning a glazed object to glass by pure chance.

Glass Beads … How Vitreous?

This is a question which has intrigued me for many years during my long professional association with glass making. Or more accurately, the question is: to what stage in the evolution of that substance we call glass to they belong?

Particularly in more recent times, what we call glass beads have considerably changed, structurally, owing to changes in their production techniques. These, changes are hinged on the use of cheaper materials, glass which melts at lower temperatures, and economising methods which have led to neglect in ensuring proper vitrification. These and a score of other technical changes have invested these beads with almost any characteristics other than those of glass. But do we interprete this as a stage in the evolution of the craft, or simply its decline? Is it simply the final loss of a difficult skill which preserved its integrity over the millenia? Looked at from this point of view, glass bead making is clearly, within the confines of its practical application, still a traditional craft, although equally plainly it is beginning to move away from that definition in Turkey.