Shelah Pansegrau, Glass Bead Artist, BELLA DOLCI, Kelowna

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Glass Bead Artist, Shelah Pansegrau, creates one of a kind, flame-worked, glass beads which are designed into intimate and wearable art.

Earthy, gem-like and translucent beads made from Venetian and German glass are strung into her
much sought after BELLA DOLCI collection of bracelets and necklaces.

Every bead is individually hand crafted from imported glass rods, pure gold and silver leaf, reduction frits
and intense fire. Every piece of jewelry is designed and crafted to include lustrous pearls,
Swarovski crystals, sterling silver beads and findings and a sterling silver tag bearing the artist's signature,
BELLA DOLCI, Italian for "Beautiful Sweets".

The Bella Dolci collection expresses the artist's evolving style and shows complex precision
and sensuous elegance in earthy, dreamy and vibrant palettes. Shelah finds working with molten glass
exciting and expressive, challenging and dangerous, obsessive and satisfying.

Below:

Tabular beads embellished with sculptural Hibiscus flowers are strung with crystals and pearls.

Hibiscus Flowers Bracelet.

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Beads have been strung into the fabric of human life since early men and women first strung or tied
found objects around their necks. Adornment is not a necessity, but human kind
have found it very compelling and spiritual to identify themselves and their tribes
with beautiful or meaningful objects.
Glass beads connect and identify people and cultures throughout history.

Because glass beads are strong and permanent works of art, I feel that my beads will convey
my perception of beauty, my playfulness and my skill long after I am gone.
I am mindful that what I create will be an intimately worn and treasured keepsake, and so I create it accordingly.
I love working with this mysterious and paradoxical substance: glass is both is clear and opaque,
hot and cold, fluid and solid, serendipitously giving and impatiently unforgiving, fragile and durable.

Beadmaking transports me to another place where there is only fire and glass -- it is pure alchemy!


Below:

Tabular and canteen-shaped, easy to wear, tribal and very funky, these beads are
miniature canvases "painted" with scrolls and bands of molten glass stringers.

Bohemian Brocade 1, 2 and 3.

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Although the laws of Physics oblige molten glass to be round in the flame, these beads were
manipulated into triangles, then decorated with hand-made, multi-colored stringers.
Other hand formed bead shapes used in the Bella Dolci jewelry collection are melon, lentil, tab,
cube, rectangle, bicone, diamond, crystal and free-hand sculpturals.

Below:

Triangular and highly decorated with hand-made stringers, the Buffalo Hunter beads emulate
painted teepees with maps of rivers, lakes and hunted buffalo.

Camp of the Buffalo Hunter.

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Navajo Canyons beads emulate the reflective rivers and dry river beds,
striated canyons and rarified blue skies of the American South West.
These beads are wound from Italian and German glass and decorated with hand-made murrini,
hand-pulled twisted canes and stringer and pure silver leaf.

Santa Fe beads are reminiscent of the bright, sky blue Turquoise gem stones of New Mexico and Arizona.
Earthy and veined with silvered ivory, some are textural, others deeply encased.
Italian glass with pure silver leaf and wire and transparent aquamarine glass.

Below:

Navajo Canyons and Santa Fe Bracelets.

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Serengeti beads are made to emulate the Leopard, Tiger, Lion and Giraffe. Beads are wound
from opaque and transparent Italian and German glass, and contain hand-pulled twisted canes
and hand-mixed tri-colored glass stringers.
Some beads are deeply encased in transparent glass for depth, magnification and sparkle;
and some beads are surface decorated with highly reactive reduction frit and stringer decoration
to yield a metallic effect. Strung with pearls and sterling silver findings.

Below:

Serengeti necklace and bracelet.