Beadwrangler Special Feature
May 15, 1997

Surfing with Sylvia Sur
May 1997

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Axel Russmeyer's Presentation at the Los Angeles Bead Society April 5, 1997

Axel Russmeyer is German bead artist who lives in Hamburg. He was featured by the Los Angeles Bead Society as the speaker for the April meeting.

For those of you who cannot place Axel Russmeyer immediately, he is featured in The New Beadwork by Moss and Scherer. His work consists of covering wooden spheres or wooden beads with small beads of a single color using peyote stitch. He covers some beads completely, others have a stringing hole.

The work is exquisite, and the workmanship bead-perfect. He uses antique steel bead 22s, and mostly antique beads sized 14 to 22. There was one sample using Delica beads. When I asked him about the Delicas, he remarked that "they are harder to use than the smaller, round beads."

Axel has studied photography as part of his art background and his slides are masterpieces. It is really hard to take excellent photos of beadwork as many of us have discovered. His pictures feature excellent indoor lighting on white backgrounds and the textures and the colors of the beads are very realistic and clear.

He uses the covered wood beads stringing one two or three on gold wire necklaces, or stringing many of them as a traditional necklace. His brand new innovation is to catch a bead in a chiffon necklace at random places. His technique is so perfect that there is no crease in the chiffon where the bead emerges from the chiffon. He lays the chiffon halfway over the wooden sphere and beads halfway around the sphere including the chiffon under the beads, then the other half of the sphere he beads without including the chiffon. And the effect is a bead trapped in the chiffon and emerging out the other side. He also sews channels and hems in the chiffon and includes beaded spheres that can slide around in the channels as the wearer moves the scarf. Again the beading technique is incredibly perfect so it looks wonderful.

Axel Russmeyer is a wonderful speaker and a very creative bead artist. The next day he was going south to San Diego to teach at the Shepherdess. I am sure the lucky participants in his class were in for a very creative day.

Sylvia Sur, Los Angeles, April 1997

Surfing the Net

The latest thing I looked at and enjoyed is a beaders' site from Russia, a Moscow beaders group. This is a very unusual site with a lot of graphic images that load relatively fast. You will see that the same techniques have evolved in Russia but with such a different color and design aesthetic. The classes link even has instructions for how to bead right angle weave Russian style with two needles. The English is quaint but understandable and the whole site is extremely friendly, sharing, and open. The Webmaster Maria only requests that no flames be sent. Enjoy the gerdan necklaces, the Easter eggs and the friendly, sharing voice of the site. URL is http://www.ropnet.ru/pages/nidus/ Just click here! Be sure to bookmark Beadwrangler's so that you can get back from Russia!

Happy surfing and keep on beading.

Sylvia Sur, Los Angeles, May 1997