SPOTLIGHT ON ... DESIGNER
July 2008

Our featured designer for this month is Kazumi Matsushita.

Beadworks came into my life since 1997 when I started to live in US. Making accessories by myself! It was so new and joyful that I became completely absorbed in it at once. At the beginning, I learned how to handle pins with pliers and to do the pearl stringing and knotting. “Just simply connected” necklaces were made and presented to my friends. As I became accustomed to handle the pliers at the first stage, I was able to handle wire works without difficulties and this had become one of the technical points necessary for me to express my own style.

Ms. Reiko Otsuka, a Japanese Beadwork Artist living in Manhattan, taught me off-loom. I still love the refined taste she has using colors. Her works are gorgeous enough for parties and operas, but my works in those days were called “PTA accessories” which were casual for everyday life as my son was still small and I seldom had chances to go out at night. My son’s teachers and parents of his friends always approved my works that has fascinated myself into beading more and more.

I love the time of beading my works and the time of thinking “what shall I make next?” looking at the beads. As I spread the beads in the room, arranging them and thinking, “Using this stone as the main, how should I make the combination?” “Wouldn’t this look smart by adding a little more color here?” (As I don’t have any atelier for beading and is using the table in the living room, I do clean the room right away after deciding the designs, of course!) I make trials and errors over and over again. It just doesn’t simply fit like puzzles at the first place. Mostly the shape and size doesn’t fit when the color is perfect. Once, a flower turned into a leaf. Forming ideas is very difficult. But this process of clearing up the new ideas and techniques is also interesting. Not always but sometimes, wonderful ideas flash across my mind when I am not thinking about beading. I feel this pleasant moment as “A reward from the Beading God.”

Getting absorbed in beading in US, I have been continuing beadworks after reluctantly coming back to Japan in 2002. At the same time, beading accessories have become popular and spread fairly widely in our country. The beads and tools of US can be bought in Japan now. Seed beads used to have export exclusive colors and there used to be colors and shapes that could only be bought in US. I had to go to New York and Hawaii sometimes in order to buy them after coming back to Japan. But nowadays, orders can be given through Internet and information can be held in common like this. It has become a convenient high-technology period. That is probably why I feel great affection for my original accessories that are only the ones of the handmade world!

Kazumi Matsushita e-mail wakazumi@hotmail.com I will move to Geneva, Switzerland this summer, so the web will be open soon.