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Handmade lampwork beads, formed from the imagination of an artist and made in his or her studio, are things of beauty. These beads require the artist’s skill, and the best materials and techniques. For this reason they command much better prices than the lampwork beads made in a factory setting.

Any glass bead not made by machine is a lampwork bead. This means a human being has wound melted glass from a glass rod around a mandrel in an open flame (lamp) to form the bead. The differences in the two types of lampwork beads, factory made and studio made, comes from the types of glass, the human imagination and the time needed to complete each lampwork bead.

A simple, one color lampwork bead is easily made in either setting. The difference is in the time taken to make the bead as perfectly as possible. In a factory setting, the worker is paid by the bead and acceptable lampwork glass beads at a lower standard than in a studio. An studio artist puts his name on his beads, either actually or figuratively speaking, and thus wants to make the best beads possible, even when making the simple ones.

The studio artist has the liberty of making the lampwork glass beads he or she wants, while the factory lampworker is given a pattern to follow. Thus the artist gets to use his imagination, cares more about the accomplishment of his design, and can make the lampwork bead as complex as he desires. The factory worker makes the same design over and over, no imagination is allowed, and making these lampwork beads is tedious at the least, allowing the quality to slip.

The factory worker has his or her materials provided, and these are not necessarily the best glass available. The studio artist wants his beads to last forever, and uses the best materials available, because using glass rods with different coefficients of expansion will cause a bead to destroy itself. The studio artist also has the time to anneal his lampwork beads properly, which may not be possible in the factory, leaving the lampwork beads wholesale brittle and easily broken.

Between the time of creation, the skill and imagination of the artist, and the quality of materials, it is obvious why artist made lampwork glass beads are more expensive than factory made beads by a factor of at least ten. Keep this in mind when looking at these two types of lampwork beads.

When looking at lampwork beads today, there is a real difference in the quality of the small and medium sized beads and the large focal beads. The advent of the lampwork artists has brought the quality of the factory-made lampwork beads up quite a bit, but there are still major difference in the way they are made.

The small and medium lampwork beads are made in a factory setting where rows of lampwork wind melting glass around mandrels. The lampworker is paid by the bead, so their emphasis is on making as many beads as possible, whether making the small spaces beads or the medium beads used in multiples to make bracelets and necklaces. In all cases they make beads to the design and specifications of the company that employs them. These lampworkers have very little choice in the beads they make, and need only achieve a certain level of quality to get paid.

A lampwork bead made by a lampwork artist is the result of hours of practice and thought about designs. For these reasons, as well as the quality of the glass used and extra time taken to make the bead perfect, the lampwork artist can produce only a few beads in an hour. Thus the beads are much more expensive. With the variety of glass rods available, and the variation possible in the decoration on lampwork glass beads, a lampwork artist only makes duplicate beads by design. The artist emphasizes the uniqueness and perfection of each bead rather than making the same beads many times.

Lampwork beads wholesale are relatively cheap, and the price is directly related to the amount of glass used in the bead, rather than the time it took to make. Artist-made lampwork beads are priced based on the complexity of the techniques used to make the bead and therefore the time it took to make it. This is why you can get fifteen inches of wholesale lampwork beads for less money that one artist-created focal bead.

There are many types of lampwork beads for sale at this time. For the last three decades, lampwork Artists have raised the bar on the acceptable quality of lampwork beads, and while wholesale lampwork beads do not necessarily meet that standard, because of the artist activity, the lampwork beads wholesale have improved as well.

Lampwork glass beads range from fairly small to large focal beads. The small beads are only made by wholesale lampwork bead makers and as practice beads by lampwork artists. The intermediate sizes are where the wholesale lampwork bead makers can show their stuff, by producing many beads of the same style and size. They are not perfectly matched, but are close enough that no one not a bead aficionado would notice the variation.

Handmade lampwork beads is mostly a term reserved for artist made lampwork beads, where the artist spends hours learning to make the bead. Eventually they can turn that one design out at three to four an hour, but they never get up to the speed of the factory lampworkers because of their desire for perfection. These lampwork beads are usually one of a kind even though the bead maker may make dozens of the same shape and style. By varying the colors of glass used for each base bead and decoration, and varying the decoration itself, it is only by design that the lampworker makes matching beads.

Look for lampwork beads at bead stores and shows, and see how varied these beautiful beads can be.