Lampwork beads by Sarah Klopping of Aloha Bead Co., Maui. They are handcrafted using the lampwork technique, using special types of glass and silver to build up layers and create different effects.
Clopin holds beads she makes using a variety of lampwork and glass techniques, which she sold at a recent bead show at the Neal Blaisdell Center, as well as in her Maui shop and on Etsy.
Sarah Klopping, owner of Aloha Bead Co. and glass lamp maker, displays the necklaces she makes and sells at the recent All Bead Show at the Neal Blaisdell Center.
Sarah Klopping, owner of Aloha Bead Co., designed this garden-inspired bracelet and offers it in a variety of colors, including a pastel shade that’s popular with brides and bridesmaids at weddings.
This garden-inspired bracelet was designed and made by Sarah Klopping, owner of Aloha Bead Co., and features lampwork beads she makes herself, as well as beads provided by the store’s suppliers.
Lampwork beads are made by artisan Sarah Klopping of Aloha Bead Company in Maui. The larger beads are hand-lampworked using special glass and silver to create a layered effect. The smaller beads are also hand-lampworked.
When handmade beads speak to your soul, they speak so loudly that they scream and you can’t help but buy them.
Many customers of Aloha Bead Co. Inc. on Maui may be in the same situation, as owner and artisan Sarah Klopping has been making art her entire adult life.
>> Aloha Bead Co.; 43 Hana Highway, Paia, Maui; Monday-Friday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.; 579-9709
“I’ve been beading for almost 38 years,” she says, referring to the small beads that most people think of when they hear the word “bead.”
Klopin’s Solar System Stars are handmade lampwork glass beads that she has been making for 17 years.
”It’s like alchemy,” she said. “You have to know where to put the flame at the right time to get the right glass.”
“Lampworking is an ancient art that originated in Mesopotamia, in what is now Iraq, before the Common Era,” she said. Early artists used oil lamps and bellows to blow air into the lamps “to make them burn brighter around the copper wire,” she said. “Now, of course, we use high-tech blowtorches that use oxygen and propane.”
She calls herself a mid-level lamp maker and is still learning. Clopin traveled to Italy to learn the craft.
Klopin combines them with glass sheets to create canes, ribbons, and other elements to make beads. She then melts the glass canes or other elements and places them on a mandrel or metal rod, “and rolls the hot glass around the mandrel” to create the handmade beads.
To create his pieces, Clopin uses various types of Italian and German art glass, double spiral and silver glass, 22-karat gold leaf, silver leaf, aventurine and dichroic glass.
Even simple beads are decorated with delicate dots of silver or glass, while others are made up of multiple layers of different types of glass, some of which glow from within and others of multi-colored glass swirled into floral or other patterns.
She still uses mass-produced beads from all over the world, incorporating them and handmade beads into the jewelry she designs.
Her garden bracelets, matching earrings, and leather hoop bracelets are so popular that she even sells them in kits so people can make their own. In her Etsy shop, a tutorial for a leather hoop bracelet without accessories costs $11.95, while a garden bracelet kit with beads, some of which are hand-made by Klopping, costs $95. A kit with intricate beads costs $89. A set of earrings costs $42 or $45, depending on whether the metal parts are gold-plated or silver-plated.
Button lovers will be pleased to know that she also owns Victorian buttons from the 1880s to the early 1900s and is a member of the National Button Society.
Bead prices in her shop range from $2.25 to $75, and she sells them to many island jewelry designers who make their own beads and sell them at craft fairs and wholesale markets.
She doesn’t sell her products at the Maui County Craft Festival, she says, because “I don’t want to compete with my customers there.” The annual All-Pearl Show is the only trade event she attends on Oahu.
She teaches lampwork to beginners in her studio. “I don’t do big classes, I teach one-on-one,” she says. Klopin also offers other classes and workshops, with prices varying depending on the project.
She came to Hawaii around 1987, she said, after seeing an ad for a job on the island. She was unsuccessful, but through local connections she moved to Maui and learned beadwork in a community above Ulupalakua.
”Everyone there was making beads,” she said. People started asking her if they could buy her beads, and that’s when she started making a living.
“I don’t get welfare, I support myself, my children, and my children through beading,” she said. She has been a member of the Pacific Crafts Guild, as well as the Maui Crafts Guild, for about 20 years. She rents her current space from the guild’s artists’ cooperative. The guild still exists today, having moved here after its original location was sold.
Post time: Jun-25-2025