New Tutorial -- Coxeter Bead

 This is my newest beaded bead tutorial, the Coxeter Bead. 

Coxeter Beads are named after the great mathematician Harold Scott MacDonald Coxeter in honor of his extensive work on symmetry, especially four dimensional polytopes, on which this piece is based.

You weave it like cubic right angle weave, but with tetrahedrons and prisms instead of cubes. This tutorial is designed for experienced beaders, and it includes charts like those found on my blog here. This tutorial assumes you already how to do cubic right angle weave and know how to connect two ends to make a continuous strip. If you don’t, check out this link at my blog to learn how. You should also probably already know how to bead a dodecahedron or at least know what a dodecahedron is before trying this design. This is a dodecahedron.

This is a spinning dodecahedron.

If you want to learn how to bead a dodecahedron, Cindy Holsclaw wrote a free tutorial.  

With most of the same materials, you can make Coxeter Beads in two sizes (26 mm and 20 mm).

This is the main design, the larger version that I used in the step photos.  It uses 3 mm Toho beads and half Tila beads, tiny drop seed beads and some size 15° seed beads.

And this is the smaller version that I describe at the end of the pattern with some extra drawings and photos.

As a beaded bead, six large holes run through the center of a Coxeter Bead.  So you can easily string it on chain or cord.

Although it might sound complicated from that introduction, the structure of this thing is actually quite elegant. Once you get the hang of it, it's quite intuitive, and my tutorial is designed to give you that intuition. Click on the photo below to see the materials list. 

The tutorial is 14 pages, including over 100 illustrations and photographs. The tutorial is a PDF file that gives charts and explanations for reading the charts to make Coxeter Beads in two sizes.

Thanks for looking!