FOR THE LOVE OF BEADS

The purpose of this Forum is to show as many examples of beads as possible in order to help in their identification. The subject is huge – far too much to cover at once. Primarily, glass beads will be shown since the majority of what we use, see and love in our jewelry are glass.

First of all, what is a bead? A bead has at least one hole. No hole means it isn’t a bead. Glass beads are generally either press molded glass (think about pouring slip into ceramics molds) or lampworked glass. Press molded beads are made in batches whereas lampworked beads are made one at a time over a flame or in front of an open kiln, and thus will vary in size and shape. It sounds like molded beads are mass made and far less labor intensive, and to some extent this is true these days, but vintage beads still required a lot of time, as the batches were small, the glass was often mixed in small batches and thus the coloring, striations, etc. vary, and were removed from the molds by hand.

Press molded beads need to have a hole drilled after they have cooled and hardened, which is generally accomplished by drilling from each side until the holes meet in the middle.

Lampworked beads are made by drawing a “gather” of molten glass on a rod; the rod must be coated with bead release (kiln wash) in order to get the bead off the rod when it is finished. Therefore, you won’t see the crumbly white bead release in the hole of molded beads as you do in lampworked beads. Much has been made of the fact the old Venetian beads had the bead release burned out, and that they were the only ones to do so. This is no longer true with the arrival of new Chinese glass beads that are designed as fakeries, as they realized the difference was noticeable and a few years ago began burning the bead release out of their beads.

Beads were the first ornaments early humans produced, and have been discovered in archaeological digs and Egyptian tombs. Everyone has heard that Manhattan was purchased for something just over twenty dollars’ worth of beads, but have you ever stopped to wonder about what kind of beads they were? They were Venetian lampworked beads, primarily made as trade beads, and primarily made for the African trade. As North America became colonized by Europeans, Venice started making beads for trade here as well.

Other than Italy, Bohemia, in the western part of what is now the Czech Republic also has a strong history of glass bead making. This area borders Germany, which shares many aspects of the same. For far more detailed information of European glass bead making, I refer you to any of the books written by Sybille Jargstorf, the undisputed authority on the subject. In the mid 20th century, Japan became a major player in lampwork bead making, not only making beads similar to European beads, but developing some of their own lines. The Japanese excelled at making faux stone beads, i.e. beads (and cabochons) that mimicked jade, carnelian, lapis lazuli, rose quartz and others.

In the 1970’s, India stepped up to the plate and also began exporting lampworked beads, but they never spent the time or energy to develop really quality beads, and Indian beads are characterized by air bubbles and other impurities in the glass.

Toward the advent of the 21st century, China entered the market also, and continue to produce better and better looking beads (although still lower quality than European beads as they do not carefully anneal their beads, which are subject to easy breakage as a result). In attempts to fake vintage beads, they may sometime bury the beads for a period of time to give them an aged appearance.