Several days back someone mentioned a person (colleague?) from my past.
This brought up many images and thoughts. One of which I hold strong to:
People that feel they’ve arrived at a design idea/concept before anyone else are simply, delusional.
Most likely if you’ve thought of it (a design/concept) it has already happened.
This holds true particularly in the art & craft world of Goldsmithing, silversmithing, and flame-working glass- mandrel wound bead making. Bead ladies (a seemingly derogative term used by some in the flame-working community) wrap molten glass around steel rods that have a protective ceramic coating, in order to remove the ‘beads’ created after they’ve been annealed in a kiln or ‘annealing’ oven.
Lamp-worked or flame-worked beads have been around, and made for something like, 3,500 years. Dots of molten glass are added to build up the design or add pattern. This is clearly nothing new, and for whatever it’s worth- ‘your’ design has most likely already been done. The only techniques that seemly differentiate one dot, raked, shaped bead from another might include; electro-forming onto the glass, etching patterns onto the glass, painting on the glass… other than that it has more than likely been created, that bead.
Many artists draw inspiration from the ocean, from biology. This is nothing new.
Without further adieu I am including the following information along with ALL of my work, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
For now it will encompass everything up and viewable on my nanopod.etsy.com shop/store. However, it also includes my audio on SoundCloud, and any future works posted here or there.
I am not in the least bit threatened by what other people may consider copycats, plagiarism, copying. For who am I to say that my vision of molecular structures, Human anatomical organs, oceanic life forms real or imagined that I bring into form through glass, or metal, or fabric, felt, clay or whatever other materials I may draw inspiration from, have not been considered before. What an arrogant ass I would be to think that I was the first and only to conjure up an idea drawn from such inspiration. ??
For instance, I love jellyfish. I enjoy creating renditions of jellyfish in glass.
I thought of putting jellyfish into glass when I saw someone create a mushroom in glass. I though, ‘WOW, instead of a stem I could add tentacles!” Turns out other people came to that same conclusion, many times over, and many times before I had. Well, to differentiate mine from theirs I fabricate metal components around my glass jellyfish. They are a ton of work to make so, I don’t make them all that often.
Human anatomical heart: In the 90′s I hand fabricated anatomical hearts through sawing, piercing and repousse work. I would sometimes add Italian branch coral for veins, and etch words onto the hearts. Last time I made these brooches was in 1995 for the Metalarts Fair at Fort Mason Center in San Francisco.
When I started working with hot glass one of the first things I wanted to make (after a mandatory paper weight) was a Human heart! Which I did. Granted the colour that was available was a creepy fleshy coral tone so, the heart ended up looking like some Mathew Barney or Cronenberg nightmare! In a good way 
Perhaps I feel this way as the years pass, and feeling like it is all so silly in an age of ‘Content Makers’ to freak out every time you see something similar to the wheel you believe you’ve invented. For whatever it is worth I have been moving in a completely different direction since I first laid eyes on a flame-working torch, metal-smithing and materials in general. Only time will tell.
Meanwhile, have fun. Be inspired! Move forward!
All work by Tosca Teran is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
Based on work at http://www.nanopod.etsy.com.
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