"Opening this gorgeous hunk of a book is like walking into a high-end jewelry gallery. There are 500 full-color photographs of beaded jewelry--necklaces, rings, bracelets, pins and earrings--created by 275 artists with beads, wire, filament, and fiber. Some of the artists are well-known to beaders, like Carol Wilcox Wells and Diane Fitzgerald, and some not-so-well-known, with their work published for the first time. This makes for a heady blend of inspiration, ideas, and expression. Editor Hemachandra selected the 500 beaded objects from submissions by 360 artists from 30 countries. To his credit, no single style-bead weaving, bead embroidery, bead stringing-gets short shrift. The photography is of high professional standards, no Instagram shots by amateurs posted to Facebook, and is also instructively illustrative of the beadwork, offering closeup shots that will help the aspiring bead worker reproduce some of the techniques." --"Publishers Weekly""" "Author and juror Ray Hemachandra has undertaken the monumental task of putting together a collection of beadwork from bead artists all over the world and turned it into a tribute to the craft of fine beadwork, written in the voices of those whom it is actually meant to recognize. As a source of inspiration, this is one book that you'll find yourself coming back to, over and over again. The colors, shapes, textures, materials, and techniques used in the beaded jewelry will have you looking at your own beaded jewelry design ideas in an entirely new way. It is a book in which you can easily lose yourself, only to come back with a fresh perspective on the age-old techniques of beading and beadweaving." --"Beading Daily"

Ray Hemachandra is an editor for Lark Jewelry & Beading and the author of numerous 500 Series and Masters Series titles, including 500 Art Quilts, as well as The Penland Book of Glass (9781600591860) and Beading with World Beads (9781600592980).