Ceramic and Lampwork bead artist Caroline Dewison from Blue Berri Beads
Q: When did you start your career as a ceramic artist? What did you do before you became a bead artist and what made you decide to become one? Was this transition difficult?
I started out making ceramic beads about 5 years ago. It was all a bit of an accident really. I was jewellery making and was trawling the net for supplies and discovered lamp work. I knew immediately that I had to make beads and that was originally what I’d set my heart on doing. I got a kiln and hoped the rest of the equipment would follow. Life got in the way and I was expecting my first child so disposable income went out of the window for a while. I still had the kiln so I started researching what else I could do with it. I’d had a forgotten about dream of working with clay when I was
younger, so I decided if I couldn’t make beads from glass, I would make them in clay.
Before becoming a bead artist, I was a sign maker/fitter. Myself and my husband ran a shop together and worked on contract fitting graphics to fleet vehicles.
It was great fun and allowed me to express my creative side designing, and my need to make things through the manufacturing and fitting. Every day was different, and I loved the fact that we got to do some amazingly high profile work such as track cars for Le Mans. This came to an end though when I was about 8 and a half months pregnant and I couldn’t fit round the side of vehicles any more.
Q: Can you tell a bit about the early days of BlueBerriBeads?
It was a huge learning curve, and it started with a lot of research. There wasn’t much information out there about ceramic beads, it was more focused towards making pots and sculpture, so I gathered everything I could find out and made enough to fire my kiln. I wanted to do everything, so there were lots of experiments and disasters, (when I finally got brave enough to fire the kiln up to 1220oC) and a lot of the time was spent sitting next to the kiln watching in terror as the numbers rose.
I set up my shop on Etsy hoping that someone
out there would love what I’d made and made my first sale… from then on, I didn’t really look back!