A bead pendant from Kristen Frantzen Orr's Garden Globe series. The focus bead is an encased floral bead of Moretti/Effetre glass, the accent beads are of borosilicate glass. Photo © Jeff Scovil. Learn how to create it!

Kristen Frantzen Orr “draws” exceptionally sharp, detailed images in her lampworked glass beads.
by Pamela Selbert

Deftly twisting together the flattened tips of two slender cylinders of glass, working the rods much like a pair of knitting needles to interlace the fragile strands, Kristen Frantzen Orr, bead maker, manipulates the tools of her trade.

To the hissing sound of blue flame turning orange as it rushes against glass, Orr delicately maneuvers the softened glass tips, turning and shaping them into beads of extraordinary beauty.

This particular bead will be a transparent gold cylinder, its ends rounded, decorated on one side with a dainty lavender iris entwined in graceful olive-green leaves, and on the other with a mysterious black flower, like some rare jasmine floating just below the surface. It's a simple effort for Orr, who is merely demonstrating her technique rather than making a “real” bead.

We had gathered on a warm February day in Orr's Mesa, Arizona, shop, a light and airy room with a wall of windows that looks out over her Southwest-style yard. The yard was once an orange orchard -- it's enclosed by a tall, pastel-painted masonry privacy wall, and is filled with massive orange, lemon, and grapefruit trees whose limbs hang heavy with fruit.

Orr, tall and willowy, with wavy brown hair and an infectious laugh, has carefully “mapped” her yard, which will soon glow with the blooms of 20 shades of irises, some of them tiny African dwarfs, plus hyacinths, daffodils, and the flowers and fragrant leaves of rosemary, oregano, thyme, basil, tarragon, and mint that provide inspiration not only for Orr's cooking (when she remembers to cook, she jokes), but for the designs on her glass beads, as do the irises, her favorite flowers.

“My studio was originally a patio that we enclosed,” says Orr, 46. “My husband didn't like me playing with fire in the basement.”

Orr runs an overhead fan while working, but because the studio can't be either heated or cooled, she works during the day only in winter. In summer, when daytime temperatures in this sun-drenched locale frequently reach three digits, Orr can be found at her torch between 10 at night and three in the morning.

DRAWING WITH GLASS. On this occasion, Orr is wearing protective glasses, didymium at the top, welder's green at the bottom. For comfort, she rests her arms on plywood strip extensions from the work table, where she has placed crunchy-sounding potholders full of ground walnut hulls that “conform to the elbows,” she says. A chair on wheels makes moving around in the small space easier.

Every available spot in the studio seems to hold glass: rods of Moretti (Effetre) glass in white, blue, lavender, green, red, and yellow spray from some three dozen heavy cardboard boxes; jars and vases of all shapes and sizes cover every flat surface and sprout long, bright-colored stems of glass. The gemlike hues are made by Moretti; the more muted shades are borosilicate glass, a “hard glass like Pyrex cookware, that produces a more earth-tone look,” according to Orr.

Orr also creates meshlike metal beads that she crochets using copper or silver filaments. These earrings, entitled Seen in the Dishpan, Too, measure two inches. Photo © Jeff Scovil.

The two types of glass cannot be worked together; borosilicate glass doesn't flow, and must be heated to about 2,000°F to work. Moretti, a “soda-lime, softer glass, can be worked at lower temperatures, and flows at about 1,200°,” she explains.

Orr uses an electric kiln for annealing her beads (she preheats rods to the annealing temperature before starting a bead). All beads must be annealed for a minimum of 30 minutes to prevent internal stress from breaking them. Moretti glass anneals at 940°, borosilicate at 1,040°.

“I say a minimum of half an hour, but I leave some of the beads in the kiln all day,” she says. “After 30 minutes, I just turn off the heat, and let the kiln cool to room temperature over about eight hours.”

While I watch, Orr first applies gold to a mandrel -- she uses cropped welder's rods dipped in bead release for her mandrels, and smooths the steel with a grinding stone -- and tells us she is “drawing with glass,” a phrase she uses often, “building a surface I can draw on.”

Orr pulls her own cane, and selects with care from the array of fragile stems that lie on the table next to the torch like so many brightly colored icicles (they even clink like ice when she roots through them for a particular color).

“If my arms were longer, I could pull longer cane,” she adds with a smile. After gathering and pulling the blobs of glass (on this occasion she combines transparent cobalt with opaque pale blue for one latticino), she cuts the slender, stretched cylinders into workable two-foot lengths that go into the jumbled pile. “Things tend to get a little cluttered!”

Now working gold glass onto the mandrel, Orr frequently extracts the growing bead briefly from the flame to marver it, pleased, she says, that it sticks slightly to the steel tongs she uses for shaping, as the stickiness helps her push it around.

“Getting a symmetrical shape takes a long time,” she says, and of the latticini in various colors that will decorate the bead, adds, “I like to be creative when I'm making flowers.”

Orr comments that the appearance of the iris as a single color is deceiving; there is, in fact, far more depth to this and the other pieces she makes, “depth created by a layering of colors, like a good watercolor painting -- I never use paint straight out of the tube -- and it draws you in.”

Made in memory of one of Orr's favorite dogs, this Star bead was displayed at the Tucson bead show; though Orr received dozens of offers for it, it was most definitely not for sale. Photo © Jeff Scovil.

One by one, she plucks varying shades of green from the glass haystack, and as she unfurls a big-bladed leaf clear to the top of the gold cylinder, incorporating some six different shades of green, “drawing with glass” seems an appropriate description of what she does. In addition to lavender, the iris petals combine opaque pink, cranberry, or rubino, and several shades of purple glass. The results are remarkable.

The iris stands out like a delicate bas relief against the glass. The other side of the gold bead will be different, for demonstration purposes, and will require another technique that includes encasing.

This flower, with five gracefully fanned petals, will appear to float deep inside the gold glass; the surface will be marvered smooth. Orr dots on bits of white glass to enhance the black petals, strokes them into graceful wing shapes, then pokes the tip of a millefiori rod into the flower's center, holding it in the flame long enough to leave behind concentric circles of blue, white, red, and gold.

Finally, when the demonstration bead is as complete as it will be, she shows us the encasing process, applying a thinly transparent, shimmering shield that enhances the appearance as much as it adds protection. Heating a rod of clear glass, Orr makes several red-orange molten swipes down the full length of the bead. Encasing “gives definition, depth,” she explains.

“I want the clear glass to be hotter, so I hold the bead farther out in the flame,” she says. “Encasing with stripes works best for me.” She makes it sound easy, but the work involves careful, simultaneous control of heat (most work is done in the middle third of the flame), marvering, and fusing -- it would be about as easy for the inexperienced as juggling a trio of hatchets.

Bead makers, I think, must by necessity be people of faith and vision, because a bead in the flame bears little resemblance to the finished product.

While Orr works, she dispenses a steady stream of advice, such as, “You must constantly be aware of the bead -- you want it hot but not molten or the flower will smear (when encasing it in the clear glass);” and “I know by the feel when a process is right;” and “When I've just tried a new design to see what I've learned, I usually take the bead off the mandrel over the wastebasket.” I know that will be the fate of the demo bead she's working on, and I tell myself it's because Orr is a perfectionist, and this bead is not finished or really representative of her work -- but it's still gorgeous, and it's hard to watch it be discarded so carelessly.

IT'S A DOG'S LIFE. In 1985, she began another endeavor which has become a passion -- raising AKC registered corgis. She now has four of the energetic little dogs with pointy ears and short, moplike legs: April, Carter, Bosun, and Scott. (Scott is “working on becoming a champion,” she says). Let loose in the yard, they chase each other around like golden-haired dynamos. During the day, Orr likes to rest her eyes from the torch by watching the dogs play.

One of her favorite corgis, her first, was a 12-year-old named Star. Just over a week before my visit, Star had become ill, and died the day before Orr was to leave to take part in the Best Bead show in Tucson.

“I buried her out there under the iris,” she says. “Then I had so much to do getting ready for the show, but I couldn't focus -- so I started making beads.”

She made two in honor of Star, and they are magnificent. One hangs from a gold chain, the other from silver. Both beads are cylinders about 21/2" long, and 1/2" in diameter. One is pink with aventurine, glittery with frit and foil, etched with an acid frosting, and decorated with blue and lavender irises. The colors of the bead remind her of a red corgi, she says.

Orr calls the style her “nouveau florals.” Using white glue -- she tried Wite-Out and Elmer's glue before deciding Aleene's Tacky glue works best -- applied with a tiny brush, she masks whatever she wants to remain shiny, then dips the bead into Dip n' Etch etching solution. Once the background has been etched, the glue can be easily washed off.

The other Star bead is made of amber-colored glass shiny with silver foil, and decorated with green stems in several shades of frit (crushed glass), layered with the different colors to give the impression of striations. The tri-color bead reminds her of a black, white, and red corgi.

The beads were displayed at the Tucson show, and Orr had dozens of offers for them. Although Orr remained firm in her resolution that they were not for sale, orders for others like them piled up.

Kristen Frantzen Orr at work. Photo: David Orr.

Among her many excellent, framed pencil drawings of corgis that hang in her kitchen is a plaque that reads: “My goal in life is to be the kind of person my dog thinks I am.”

“After I got Star, 12 years ago, I started drawing corgis, putting them on greeting cards that I sell at the dog shows,” she says. “I became a real corgi specialist.”

Her interest in making items to sell at dog shows prompted Orr to take a class in silversmithing with a local jewelry maker, Wendell Waters. “I loved the work, but I wanted color, and decided glass beads would work well with the silver,” she says. “But I never thought of buying beads -- I thought, 'Oh, I can do that!'”

And, with a little help from a Lewis Wilson video and a propane torch, “the kind plumbers use,” Orr taught herself to lampwork beads. In those early days, though, the torch “contaminated the glass and all my beads came out gray,” she recalls with a rueful smile. Not long after that, at the 1993 Tucson gem and mineral shows where Orr had gone with her son, David, an avid mineral collector, she met bead maker Patricia Frantz (see “Beans, Beets, Berries, and Beads,” April, 1997). “I watched her demonstrate lampworking at the show, doing beautiful work, and I was sure I could do it too if I just had the right equipment,” Orr says. “I took a bead making class at a stained glass store in Phoenix, using a real torch, and I knew I'd found my niche.”

She ordered a Nortel Minor Burner, a “propane-oxygen torch that burned hotter and cleaner, and then there were no more gray beads, a major breakthrough for me,” she says. She bought her Bethlehem Starfire torch a year ago.

Interested in improving her technique, Orr has attended numerous workshops given by renowned bead makers, most notably Loren Stump of Sacramento and Leah Fairbanks (see “Garden Under Glass,” October, 1997) of Marin County, California. She calls them both “incredibly giving teachers. I owe them each a debt of gratitude for the progress I made,” she says.

GETTING A BREAK. About five years ago, Orr and a handful of other local artists founded the Arizona Society of Glass Beadmakers. The group now boasts 45 members, and frequently brings in well-known bead makers from around the country to host workshops in Phoenix. (Putting her journalism skills to use, Orr is currently editor of the society's newsletter.)

Orr got a big break, one that propelled her into the bead making spotlight, after she took part in the first Best Bead show in Tucson in 1996. Show sponsor Lewis Wilson had designed ads which included a photo of the work of everyone taking part.

Orr works with both silver and copper wire for her crocheted metal beads; the copper is the harder of the two to find and work with, as Orr must melt a plastic coating from the copper wire before starting to crochet. By increasing and decreasing stitches, she can form round beads and tubelike chains. Photo © Jeff Scovil.

Among those who saw the cameos was New York jewelry designer Denise Adamany, who calls her firm Ladybeads. Adamany liked what she saw, and contacted Orr. She wanted Orr's beads for both her production line of necklaces, sold through Saks Fifth Avenue stores across the country, and in her one-of-a-kind pieces.

“Denise chooses a color scheme, and I lampwork the beads, 11 focus beads per necklace,” explains Orr. “I also make glass spacers for the necklaces.” Purchased Austrian lead crystal beads are also often added to the designs.

The color combinations are eye-catching -- beads in shades of purple and blue, cranberry and red, or gold and brown worked into 36-inch single-strand or triple-strand necklaces, and six-strand twisted torsade chokers.

Orr joked that sometimes she feels like a “bead factory” when she must make the same style of bead hundreds of times. She spends six to eight hours a day (or night) in the studio, and in that time can make five of the big iris beads or about 30 of the production beads.

“In the beginning when I'd have to do the same kind of bead over and over, sometimes I'd have a lucky accident -- and then I'd have to figure out exactly what had happened,” she says with a grin. “Over the past two years I've tightened my style, and really started to understand glass.”

Orr is given a certain latitude when designing beads for Adamany, such as the times when Ladybead's private customers want custom-made strands of beads to go with clothing they're having sewn.

“Denise sends me packages of threads from the cloth, and lets me play around with color and design for the beads,” she says. “Now, too, I've branched out on my own with designs, and have come up with more earthy styles than what Denise uses.”

Orr notes that her earliest beads were floral globes, marvered smooth. She calls her newer creations “rock gardens,” beads made from the harder borosilicate, that “look like pebbles, such as boulder opal, some of them decorated with flowers.”

Orr uses many of these beautiful cylindrical beads for her own necklaces, attaching either end of a bead to the 1/8 to 1/2" tube chains she makes from silver or copper wire.

She developed the tube chains and crocheted round metal beads a year ago when trying to come up with something different to submit to a five-month juried exhibition called that took place in Albuquerque, New Mexico, ending in January of this year (See “The Crash of Metal and Glass,” October, 1997).

“I had read about textile techniques for metal, and once saw crocheted metal disks in a magazine,” she says. “There were no instructions so I figured it out for myself, making two single crocheted disks which I then stitched together.”

Orr works with both 30-gauge silver and 20-gauge copper wire for her unusual -- and stunning -- creations. The silver wire is relatively simple to find; it is available in craft shops. For the copper, she buys copper magnet wire at a local salvage yard -- it comes in six shades, “three copper colors, plus red, green, and persimmon.” Unlike the silver wire, the copper wire comes with a coating that must be removed -- Orr melts it off in the kiln -- before it can be crocheted. She achieves the round shape by an ingenious system of increasing and decreasing stitches.

Of her beadwork -- glass and metal, sometimes even a delicate pearllike combination of the two -- Orr says she enjoys creating artwork that's more portable than paintings usually are.

“Beads are more intimate in that you can hold them, wear them,” she says. “And as far as what I can make, the possibilities are unlimited.”

For lampworking techniques, see "Lampworked Floral Globe Bead" by Kristen Frantzen Orr and David Orr in Jewelry Journal.