Independent Co-Design

When good designs collide.....it happens, probably more then we imagine, two beaders independently coming up with really similar ideas....and sometimes it ends well.  They travel in the same beady spheres, the work of one gets completed, the other happens to see it and laughter and appreciation for one another's design aesthetic can be shared.

You might look at the sketch on the left and consider that I had drawn it in preparation for the piece on the right.  Yes it morphed along the way, but it's rather similar don't you think?  

The sketch on the left belongs to Beki Haley, the design on the right Vienna was beaded by me.  I never saw Beki's sketch, she never saw my Vienna, until it was done and posted and she wrote me, attaching her sketch. Update, Beki posted her own story here.

So what would have happened if we hadn't known each other, if Beki went on to bead her sketch and posted it.  In Beki's words, we might have gotten 'our knickers in a twist' having thought one or the other was 'highly influenced' but we would have been wrong.  I think the properties of certain stitches lend themselves to certain ways of designing and CRAW, cubic right angle weave lends itself to 'drawing with the beads' to creating curves and angles.  It's natural to change bead sizes along the way and the result is often similar.

When I was making Vienna I was really aiming to make the aqua and gold shape you see here,  only larger.....but when I got half way through the first side, I did what I do, I play with my beadwork and I curved it and joined it and the top half was formed.  The center pendant just appeared in my imagination and I beaded it up without much thought.

Look however at the shape I was trying to make, pretty darn similar to these beautiful earrings that Helen Fountain made.....The shape was the same the bottom in larger beads was the same and then I pinched mine in with one more cubic connection.  I never saw Helen's earrings until she sent me a photo because I'd been extolling the virtues of CRAW on a previous blog entry.

There are certainly occasions where someones work is more derivative then we might be comfortable with, feeling that our hard won design session is benefitting someone else, however I think often multiple people arrive at the same place through bead exploration.  It's nice when we can have a laugh over it and move forward to the next bead design in our sketch books.  Thank you Beki and Helen for being so gracious.