Business: Traders of the Lost Arts
Murray looks on as Lesley manufactures another glass bead. Photos: Gerard Hindmarsh.
Glitz Art Glass is the glass bead-making business of Lesley McIver, while her husband Murray turns out his woodwork creations as Golden Bay Toys.
The couple have been working at their crafts from their studios at their Pohara home. They moved into the Takaka CBD in April, combining their workspaces at 47b Commercial St, beside Golden Bay Organics, under the single banner, “Traders of the Lost Arts”.
“It made sense to let people know that we both make things that you don’t see much around these days,” Lesley explained.
Lesley is now recognised as one of perhaps only 10 working glass lampworkers in the country. Lampworkers use a high-temperature gas burner to heat and reform coloured glass rods or “canes” onto clay-lined stainless steel rods called mandrels, which are held to work the piece.
Lesley sells her beads as necklaces, bracelets and earrings. She also gives many away as “Beads of Courage” to the Child Cancer Foundation, to mark child cancer patients’ treatment milestones. Remission earns them a purple heart.
Murray cuts at home in his Pohara workshop all the wooden blanks he needs for his “old-fashioned, push-and-pull-along, brightly painted toys”. He then brings them into the shop for four coats of brush painting and assembly into the final assortment of snails, ducks, trains, turtles, frogs and yo-yos.
Says Murray: “Everything in our shop is made by us, which creates the challenge of providing a wide range of products, but we are both directed and work together well.”
Gerard Hindmarsh
