What Is A Beading Table?
Posted by marcologun on November 11, 2007
Remember when you were a child and your mother or father would take you to the pediatrician’s office? Remember all those little toys that the doctor had, little race cars and teddy bears? Do you remember the beading table? Well, if you do, then you had a pretty strange doctor. Not many pediatricians have beading tables in their offices, but what they did have was normal bead tables. It might not seem important but there is a very large difference between a bead table and a beading table. Bead tables are small, plastic desks that usually have three or four multi-colored wires sticking up through the tabletop in different directions. Each plastic wire has multiple large colored beads that children push through, following the twisting wire to their end. I remember those when I was a kid, and although I never really understood the point of them, I always had to push all of the beads to the opposite end of the wire.
Old Times around the Table
On the other hand, a beading table is a place for a few people to sit around with a ton of different beads and everyone creates masterful forms of artwork. Sitting around the beading table, people share ideas and techniques for beading, be it a new move to tie off the bracelets or a telling the others about the new type of beads that you found online. Contests, even races can be held around beading tables, where all of the people sitting have the same time to complete a certain design, and the first person to complete it correctly wins. Beading, some people say, is one of the lost social arts of the past. Nowadays people are too busy in their life to just sit down and make something, everyone is out and about with no time to slow down.
These Days…
Of course in these rapid and convoluted days not many people have time to sit around the beading table every Sunday and share, but fortunately a woman by the name of Deborah Roberti has created an online version, a site called Around the Beading Table, in which she offers different bead patterns for sale. In addition to that, she brings back the atmosphere of old beading tables by offering tips and tutorials for techniques that may be a little complicated. If that’s not enough, she even offers her own reviews of beading books, telling you which one will be the most helpful for what you need. You can find her site at www.aroundthebeadingtable.com, and from her site you can browse her favorite links to other types of beading sites.
