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Old 2008-04-04, 7:29am
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swamper swamper is offline
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Join Date: Jun 15, 2005
Location: Hagerstown, Indiana
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Hi Linda, I think what you haven't gotten from some of these posts, though it has already been discussed, is that the cost to create a new color, especially some of the reactive colors, are astronomical. I don't believe that the glass companies producing these colors are making out-of-line profits from the sale of their glass. We, the beadmakers, are asking and begging for these colors, and companies that have the ability are producing them, but extraordinary glass sometimes costs extraordinary money.

I also don't subscribe to the theory that these reactive glasses are used so you don't have to learn technique. I've been learning technique for many, many years now and I love those glasses, whoever makes them. It gives me excitement to work with some of these reactive glasses to see all they will do. People make fantastic beads without the reactive colors, however people make fantastic beads with the reactive colors. People make horrible, ugly beads, whether using the reactive colors or not. Just because you use a certain glass doesn't make up for the lack of technique. In fact, you need to learn a whole set of new techniques to work with many of these glasses and the learning curve is sometimes long.

Would I love to see some of these glasses at $10 a pound, of course, but no one in their right mind would attempt to produce these glasses and sell it for that price. Perhaps some day if they can get their batching procedures honed the prices will drop, but like making a bead, the price is based, many times, on the amount of work that has been put into creating the bead, the number of attempts made that failed, the amount of time involved in getting it all to work together and finally, somewhat, on the cost of the materials involved.



I don't debate that the cost of the new silver glasses is justified - what worries me is that if the market sees that we will tolerate such prices for some glass that the price of common colors will rise too, because they have seen that the market will tolerate it - it all started with handpulled colors being higher than the factory pulled - we all learned to be dependent on the hand pulled colors and paid the price - somehow, I still think that not making myself clear that I am talking about supply and demand and what the market will bear.
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