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Old 2012-11-12, 11:21am
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Kalera Kalera is offline
I'm a lilac!
 
Join Date: Jun 09, 2005
Location: Portland, Oregon
Posts: 8,793
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Over the years, I have seen (and participated in) a lot of hurt feelings over designs, styles, and techniques, and my perspective has changed quite a bit over time. In the past I would have been upset to see someone post a set of beads that were "my" design, but in many ways I feel that the lampwork bead world was smaller and less developed then... our library of techniques was relatively small, and there weren't so many artists, nor did we spring out of the gate with such a tremendous wealth of knowledge at our fingertips. The bar is a lot higher now, and there is a lot more support in place for us to reach it.

Now, lampwork is so much more sophisticated, and I'm not so sure about copying anymore. What are "my" designs? How would I know if someone was duplicating them? There are some areas in which copying is pretty cut and dried, like when a factory in Chiina reproduces a sad facsimile of someone else's beads and sells them for 50 cents. But there used to be huge, huge kerfluffles over things like "I made a set of red beads with gold leaf, and she listed an identical set a week later!"

I'm glad those days seem to be gone.

With the advent of the e-book tutorial I have seen both more sharing in some ways, and less sharing in others. I am happy to see some excellent teachers putting a lot of work into sharing their knowledge, and a little less happy to see some "idea hoarding", which bothers me. We've always had idea hoarding in the form of secret glass combination or techniques (man, I remember getting the dirtiest look at the Gathering in 2003 when I innocently asked an artist if the pretty bead was iris gold over ivory - he told me he wasn't sharing that information, and the implication was that I was terribly rude for asking) but with the advent of pay tutorials it seems like the first thing many people ask themselves when they stumble across something new is not "what can I make with this?" but "can I sell this information?" and I think that's unfortunate.

I feel like I'm just rambling now.
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-Kalera

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