Loren Stump Mouse Beads & Venetian Figures

We made exactly one bead in five days, a wonderful ivory mouse with pink eyes. It was an interesting exercise in heat control. The eyes are made from rubino oro (gold ruby) glass, which reacts with ivory to make black. So if the eyes were overheated, yuck! Also, the tail is pulled as a long stringer from a molten ball of glass and wrapped all the way around the mouse in one step. Tricky!

Loren's mouse sample and then mine.


Notice that black lower body along with Loren's mouse? We got two demos of these classic Venetian figures, and tried our hands at making the legs and lower body. Tricky! I kept getting the legs going the wrong direction. These are made of soft glass in the torch with no warming except at the extremities where more glass gets added. No glass figural work in my near future!

Loren's figures, the first with long hair, a swirling ribbon in one hand, and a flower in the other.