ABR Imagery offers a wide selection of instructional videos to help learn lampworking techniques.
If you are new to the technique, you can pick up Essential Lampworking for Beginners. This course gives you the foundation knowledge to get started.
After getting some torch time under your belt, you can move on to Essential Lampworking Volume One, and Volume Two.
In case you want to get more in depth with beads, you can also pick up Essential Bead Making. Essential Boro Bead making will provide an in depth look at techniques specific to beads.
For a different approach, you can pick up Curved Beads to learn from Leslie Thiel. This will add some variety to your bead making skills.
With a different teacher comes a different style, and James Smircich brings his point of view on bead making with Smircich Makes Beads Volume One and Volume Two.
“Lampworking” by Lampworking_-_U._Dist_Street_Fair_1993.jpg: Joe Mabelderivative work: Verdatum (talk) – Lampworking_-_U._Dist_Street_Fair_1993.jpg. Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons – http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lampworking.png#mediaviewer/File:Lampworking.png
“Lampworking is a type of glasswork where a torch or lamp is primarily used to melt the glass. Once in a molten state, the glass is formed by blowing and shaping with tools and hand movements. It is also known as flameworking or torchworking, as the modern practice no longer uses oil-fueled lamps.
Although lack of a precise definition for lampworking makes it difficult to determine when this technique was first developed, the earliest verifiable lampworked glass is probably a collection of beads thought to date to the fifth century BC. Lampworking became widely practiced in Murano, Italy in the 14th century.
In the mid 19th century lampwork technique was extended to the production of paperweights, primarily in France, where it became a popular art form, still collected today. Lampworking differs from glassblowing in that glassblowing uses a furnace and glory hole as the primary heat source, although torches are also used.”
