Making Beads in Africa: WORK OF OUR HANDS Woman's project

Five Rand Squatter's Camp Okahandja Namibia. 

Home of fairly traded, OKAWA Ceramic beads. ( small treasure)

There are a few extra challenges in Africa, when it comes to to ceramic bead making. Mostly however, it's the same challenges all ceramic artists face. I'll describe our process, and if you are new to bead making, maybe it will help. If you are an old hand at it, maybe you can give me a few suggestions.

 greenware beads

First of course we must obtain our materials. For this we have to order from South Africa. It costs us at least 50% on top of our cost of materials to pay shipping and taxes to import.  I'm glad we are not any further north than we are already.

We use earthenware clay. Some beads are carved, and some left smooth for painting. At first the ladies had trouble getting the bead sizes consistent. Then I thought of having them use measuring spoons.  It worked great. We make beads from 1/4 teaspoon of clay, up to 3 teaspoons of clay. I have also made molds of my sculpted pendant beads, so the ladies can easily reproduce them by press molding.

Anna

 I chose to use underglaze for painting our beads, because I love detail, and felt it would be easier to achieve with underglaze. I also thought it would make us different from Kazuri beads  (made in Kenya).

We  paint on  greenware rather than bisque. There are a couple of reasons. 1. I just like the feel of painting on the greenware. 2. it allows us to do some sgraffito  3. We have a chance to catch and fix mistakes after the bisque firing, and before glazing.

We have recently opened our new community center in Five Rand Camp called ENONGELO center.

( place of learning.)

where we have a wonderful ceramic studio.

Before : my back yard work shop

When I started the ceramic bead making a couple of years ago, we had a small studio in the squatter's camp for the ladies to work in. However, it was taken away from us in an African coup! So for quite awhile the ladies had to work under a shade roof at my house. We are all very grateful for our new studio !

under glazed greenware

bisque firing


After the underglaze, we bisque fire in my small kiln ( 3 cubic feet). The beads can touch, but strong colors rub off on their neighbors, so we have to keep like colors together. Which brings us to one of our challenges here. Electricity. We operate under 220 volt, yet houses are only allowed to have 45 amps. coming in. ( Yes, for the whole house.) So I can operate the small kiln in my garage, but only if nothing else is running at the same time. If I try to cook and operate the kiln, I have to reset the breaker every couple of min.  We also have  unscheduled power outages every few months, but only every few months is  a good record for Africa .

Painting in the new studio

After bisque firing, we use brush-on transparent glaze.  I have had more frustration over glaze, than any other aspect of bead making. Transparent glaze is so picky ! Too much and it goes milky, too little and it looks dry. Grrrrr!

Then there is the "How to put them in the Kiln" issue. I see on the web that most of you use your square shelf supports as holders for the kiln wire. For some reason our kiln supports here are round :(.  Also, we don't have those nifty specialty bead-holder things you have in the USA.  I first tried sticking wires out of a kiln brick........disaster ! Finally I hit on the plan of  cutting kiln bricks into 6 logs each. We stack these 5 high with the wires going between the logs.

To get enough power for our big kiln, we fire in our shipping container shop. Since it's a business, we can have 60 amps coming in.

THE BIG DADDY KILN

Our shipping container converted to a shop at the wood carvers market Okahandja

Some finished beads

Most of our beads are made up into jewelry. We sell at the Namibian Craft Center in the capital city Windhoek, and we sell a bit at our container shop in our own town of Okahandja.

I would say one of our project's biggest challenges is marketing. There are many reasons.  Only the tourists really buy from us, and our season for tourists is short.  I'm an artist and no good at marketing, plus I'm already too busy keeping the project running.

 In April this year I was in Colorado visiting daughters and grandchildren. We had a booth at the Rocky Mountain Bead Society's bead bazaar in Denver.  I was quite please with the reception, sales and compliments we got.

However, for the most part, I just don't know how to sell beads in the USA when I'm in Africa 10 months of the year. How do those " Kazuri" bead people do it?