...Helical Layering

     Let me explain the above title: If you have read either the Company History or the Personal Bio, the Trade Secret won't come as a big surprise. But if you haven't read either and have just looked at some of the pictures, then you are in for this big surprise:

                         Everything at this website is made from paper!

     That's it! That's the Trade Secret. This whole company got it's start from the winding of paper beads in the manner that millions of kids have done during the holiday season at home or at school. (If you didn't do it as a kid, ask around and you'll find that you know dozens of people that did.)

     While this craft has been around at least as long as Cloissonne, it has never achieved the status of art;  not at least until I applied some engineering know-how and space-age materials to the process. When it passed the craft/art threshold it got baptized with the fancy title of helical layering.  I figured it deserved it's own name and so I borrowed helical from all the talk about DNA in the news at the time and the layering half was obvious.

     I use recycled paper in the helical layering process whenever possible and use a number of techniques to create the final product.  Among them are saturation whereby the paper is not sealed before the final coating. This allows the coating to sink deeply into the paper.  With the right papers this creates a translucence that gives the bead great visual depth.  Frottage is a light sanding before the final coat which accentuates the geometry of the winding pattern itself.  Mixing liquid dyes in different solvents, such as water and alcohol, causes a frizzone pattern.  These unpredictable lightning-like patterns are fascinating to look at and are an example of where nature does the work for me.