Julie Fountain is the award winning artist behind Beach Art Glass, working from her Worcestershire studio, where she has been making and teaching glass bead making since 2007. Julie was first drawn to bead making when she came upon the glass itself, beautiful rods in gleaming jewel colours, just waiting to be melted and combined into new shapes and textures.
She creates each bead by hand using a technique known as lampwork: melting and shaping rods of Italian glass in a high temperature flame, first to create the decorative components, then the beads themselves, to which she adds fine silver highlights and those intricate handmade details. After a long, slow, controlled cool in a kiln to strengthen the glass, Julie turns her beads into incredibly wearable jewellery using sterling silver findings, most of which are also handmade in the UK.
Whilst clearly redolent of the seashore, and evoking seaside memories from both at home and abroad, Julie’s designs are highly influenced by the glass itself – the colours and patterns, textures and shapes. What originally started out as simple swirls of colour and shape have over time developed into a distinctive and highly focused collection of shapes and finished pieces that have delighted customers all over the world.