Skip to main content"It's not the band I hate, it's their fans." --Nova Scotia rockers Sloan
I'm tempted to use this handy song lyric regarding my experiences at last weekend's highly anticipated Embellishment Bead and Button Show. But before I do, I have to ask myself this question: Do I fear the very notion of something as crafty as a "bead" show, or just the Pams, Peggys and Priscillas who attend it?
Embellishment 2002 (its eighth edition, and the fourth in P-town) was to be, by all reports, the crème de la crème of doodad expositions. And with one look into the Oregon Convention Center's bowels, surrendered for one whole weekend to more than a hundred of vendors and instructors who dig that strand of hobbyism, it was easy to see why. The bead-counters here talked, hawked, instructed and displayed everything from peridot to Fimo before legions of crafty women with way too much time on their itty, bitty hands.
Sound bitchy?
Alas, such was the shape of my prejudices before spending a morning in bead land. No doubt, for beaders this was paradise, not unlike Wonder Woman's own island. Tables here were loaded down with hanks of seed beads, only to be mauled by big-purse-toting crafters who muttered to each other, "I love beads way too much," like two divorcees guiltily forking a cheesecake. And there was plenty of "wearable art" too, in the coastal-craft-gallery vein: iridescent crystals on twists of satin ribbon; blown glass embedded with plastic blossoms; and the dreaded Kokopelli Native American pendant.
But beads are intimate little things, and actually finding a tiny, hidden treasure to take home requires a close-up glance and the patience of, well, someone who beads.
For example, I found Carol Risher, an Internet businesswoman who came all the way from Montana. Risher had plenty of beads to offer, but the action was in her cameos--vintage etched pieces in jadeite green, Delft blue and terra cotta. You wouldn't think a little lump of pressed acrylic could yield such detail--carnations, mythological scenes, maidens suggestively gamboling with fawns in meadows. Although a cameo is designed to be mounted in an intricate beaded frame and strung on a necklace (Risher had some completed examples for sale), these are weird, wee things of beauty in themselves. If traditional themes don't set your clavicles afire, consider a cameo emblazoned with a locomotive, a matched team of show ponies or (my favorite) a swordfish leaping in a wave of spray.
And the dollhouse fun doesn't stop there.
From another vendor, I picked up a couple of yards of chocolate brown, blue and white French jacquard ribbon embroidered with an intricate Art Deco motif. This girl felt like Gollum getting down on her knees to find the balled-up wad of pretty in a humble suitcase stashed under a card table ("yes, my precious"). And though bead sellers bandy about the word "vintage" a smidgen too much (it can mean '40s Bakelite or '80s oven clay), there's a gemlike allure to a sack of antique Czech glass buttons ($30 for a 100-count bag).
Minimalist modern types might grumble about the impracticality of ornamental beads and buttons. So fussy. So decorative. But one glimpse at finished craft pieces, such as Susan Shie and James Acord's Fiesta Ware Quilt, reveals the irreverent and personal pleasure of a beader's twisted little world. And the result is part folk art, part Lynda Barry comic, part Watts Towers, and nothing less than a hymn to beauty on a human scale.
I guess beauty really is in the eye of the beadholder.
Help thyself to cheap(er) vintage finds from Ann's always lively collection at this storewide sale. Through Aug. 1
WWeek 2015