Questions:
Q. Where are you from originally?
A. I was born in Erlangen, Germany, which is a small town 45km away from where I live now. I’ve grown up at my grandparents on the countryside and moved to Bamberg four years ago. I love to be here, because the city is very historic, we have a big park and many old churches and buildings around here.
Q. Were you artistic growing up? If so, what was your medium?
A. My grandparents have worked at home as violin builders, so I’ve grown up in a crafty area. As a child I loved to sit next to my grandma while she was doing her work and me drawing pictures. Later on I began oil paintings and acryl, painted my furniture, designed jewelry, Fimo and lot of other things. But I didn’t not really find what I was searching for in those materials.
Q. What inspired you in the very beginning of your artistic journey?
A. I think every person has one or two talents, some people are good in everything, I couldn’t think of anything else for myself than doing art.
Q. Who introduced you to working with glass?
A. I had a beginner lampworking class before I bought myself a torch etc. I wanted to see if that really works for me. But I worked with glass years before, not as a lampworker but for my jewelry designs.
Q. How long have you been working with glass?
A. I’ve been creating glass jewelry for 14 years and I’m doing lamp work beads now since 4 years.
Q. How did you become interested in making lamp work beads?
A. I wasn’t interested in doing beads at first, I wanted to do lamp work rings, just for myself. I didn’t like the kind of glass jewelry one could buy at the shops. Now I don’t do rings anymore, because I like the smaller and detailed work of doing beads and love to create sets.
Q. What are some of the things that inspire you in your bead designs?
A. Music is one of the biggest things that inspires me while I’m sitting at the torch or that helps me finding the certain groove of the beads. Furthermore I think all my experiences in life are a inspiration, if I’m happy you’ll see that in my beads and if I’m feeling bad I don’t go to the torch at all.
Q. What is the most pleasing element for you in making your beads?
A. There are so many things that I love about lampworking! It’s the fact that I can do whatever I have in mind, it’s the material glass, the shiny and colorful elements and the fact that I can concentrate myself onto small things and forget the world around me for a while. It’s like meditation.
Q. How long does it take you to make one of your sets? We know time varies based on number, but give us a rough estimate.
A. To be honest I never look on the watch while I’m working. It’s just not important for me if a bead takes longer or not. But I would say I’ll never work more than three days on one set (depending on the number of beads it’s one to three days).
Q. What do you do to keep your work fresh?
A. Maybe I should answer this question in 10 years or something like that. I don’t feel like keeping my work fresh, I’m just at the beginning. But maybe one point is, that I only do beads I would like to wear myself.
Q. You don’t do custom orders, and this is understandable. Can you give some illumination as to why you decided against this?
A. I want to go forward with every bead I do. Of course I don’t manage that goal always, but at least I try. The other thing is also that glass colors and charges change, you can’t always guarantee to offer this or that particular tone and if you do custom orders you have to write down what you’ve used etc., that’s not my way of working. But each artist has to decide that point for him or herself (I also did custom orders at the beginning and felt unhappy with it, so I had to change it). I think it’s a wonderful thing for the jewelry designers, so it’s important that there are artist who DO custom orders.
Q. What would you like to say to the lampwork artists everywhere who are inspired by you?
A. Look into your heart and do what expresses your feelings the best and don’t force yourself into trends.
You can purchase beads by Melanie at
www.melaniemoertel.de
and you can also link to her eBay auctions there.
Melanie Moertel
Glasperlendesignerin | Lampwork Artist
Habergasse 3 | 96047 Bamberg | Germany
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