Lotti is a Lampwork (or Flamework) glass artist and she started off in this line of glass art making beads. Glass has always been a bit of a family thing, he sister worked as a glass buyer for a large department store and the family‘s favourite poem was ‘Overheard on a Salt Marsh’ by Harold Munro; the first two lines of which are ‘Nymph, Nymph, what are your beads? Green Glass Goblin’. For Lotti to find that you could make your own ‘green glass beads’ was a revelation to her and she quickly enrolled on a course in North Devon in 2010; since then she has attended further workshops and classes and is a member of an active worldwide forum where ideas are shared and problems solved.
Inspired by the wonderful countryside and wild Atlantic Ocean on her doorstep, Lotti makes beautiful glass bead jewellery and pulls for bathroom lights, or for blinds or even fans, anything that has a pull cord.
Lampworking is the art of melting glass rods (generally) in a high temperature duel fuel torch, the two fuels are propane and o
xygen. To make beads the rods are melted onto steel sticks or mandrels coated with a fine clay mixture to prevent the glass sticking to the mandrels. You can buy glass in lots of different colours and some react in the flame to produce interesting effects. To create the beads various tools and hand movements are used to create the designs and effects. One the bead is made (and very quickly) it is placed in a digitally controlled kiln to anneal or harden, this can take 12 hours to cool. Once the beads are cool they are removed from the kiln and the mandrels removed by soaking the bead and the clay mixture left in the hole is cleaned out, the bead is then inspected to ensure it is of the highest quality before making it into a jewellery item or selling. All jewellery items that Lotti makes are made with sterling silver except for cufflinks which are made with plated silver bases to keep down the cost, for ear studs she sometimes uses surgical steel.
You can find more information about her on her website including more photographs and you can contact her here. Lotti also has an online Etsy shop where you can currently buy her jewellery and her light/blind pulls, the photos below with the prices are some of the items from the her online shop (there are more, this is just a sample), clicking on a photo will take you directly to the shop.
Items for sale online