Want to try making beads? Reserve a spot now!
10 years old and above.
1 hour, making several beads from start to finish
2 hours notice needed -
please email us on info@kitengela.glass or
call/SMS/WhatsApp +254 11 0001499 to confirm your booking.
Bead making includes tuition with an expert teacher, annealing space & any molten glass used.
All beads made by the client can be taken after 4pm the next afternoon or delivered to our shops @ the Junction or Village malls in Nairobi two days after that.
Kitengela bead making
A Dance of Fire and Form
At Kitengela Hot Glass, we make beads using an adapted version of the traditional Nigerian technique - infused with our own tweaks and style.
It starts with a small, bisque-fired ceramic day pot, holding just about a kilo of molten glass. This humble crucible is brought up to temperature inside one of our larger annealers as it wakes for the day. A compact bead annealer - basically the hollow lid of the bead furnace - is preheated alongside.
Once ready, a gather from one of our main furnaces is carefully dripped into the bead pot, charging it with fresh glass. The real magic begins now.
We work with two mandrels: one cold, one hot.
The cold mandrel lifts a finger of molten glass upward from the surface of the melt. As it begins to fall, the hot mandrel - dusted with kiln release - catches it mid-air. The glass clings to the heat. The maker begins to rotate, drawing up more of the melt onto the mandrel, like winding honey from fire.
With glass in hand, the shaping begins. Flattened, squeezed, turned - each bead is formed by intuition, experience, and touch. Then, with a sharp tap, the finished bead is knocked free, and slid off into in a ceramic chute that drops it gently into the annealer below, where the furnace’s exhaust gases keep the temperature just right.
Each bead is a mini sculpture. No two are alike.
Born of heat, held by hand, cooled by care.
