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Mystery Bead Hall of Fame for Past Contests
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Contest from October, 2010
Amy Niwa won the October Mystery Bead Contest, correctly identifying the strand of beads pictured in the Bead Society website as IndoPacific beads or trade wind beads. These small monochrome drawn ancient glass beads were made in southern India. The bead's name comes from its' distribution all over the Old World. Manufacture began a couple of centuries BCE in Arikamedu, India and lasted nearly 2000 years. The beads come in a limited range of colors.
At least five other Asian sites produced these beads in long forgotten towns in
Thailand, Viet Nam, Sri Lanka, Malaysia an Indonesia.
These specific examples came from a shipwreck of unknown age off Zanzibar, Tanzania which is right across the Indian Ocean from India.
These were the single greatest trade bead of all time. Peter Frances tells us they are still being made in a small village in southern India.
This information comes from Peter Frances Jr. who traveled all over the world to discover the history of IndoPacific beads. We recommend Beads of the World, 1994, p. 14 by Peter Frances.
The Bead Emporium ,1987. by PFJ is a guide to the beads from Arikamedu in the Pondicherry Museum.
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Contest from September, 2010
The Mystery Bead for September is a recently made Jatim bead in the pelangi style
which has these multicolored loops. The word Jatim stands for Java/Timor which is
the area where these ancient beads were found in Indonesia, made in the fifth century
and onwards. (reference James Lankton) An excellent reference book is
Manik di Indonesia by Sumarah Adhyatman,1993.
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Contest from March, 2010
The Mystery Bead for March has two names: whitehearts and cornaline d'Aleppo beads. And
there are two main ways of making them: by drawing hot glass and by winding hot glass around a
mandrel. These are compound beads meaning they have more than one layer of glass. The center
color is usually opaque white but it can be yellow, pink other colors. The outside coating is
usually transparent red glass but can be any transparent color. The white interior makes the
transparent outer color really pop with a bright intensity.
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Contest from January-February, 2010
This is a glass mosaic or millefiore bead made in Venice in the late 1800's or
early 1900's. There are probably thousands of patterns of these wonderful and
complex beads, many of which are shown in Jean and Ruth Picard's book which is
Volume 6, Millefiore Beads from the West African Trad . Kay Deeney knew
the answer and got to keep the bead.
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Contest from December, 2009
This west African made bead is cut from the shell of the arca clam. These large
white heavy rectangular beads are also called "hippo teeth" They are not.
The arca shell is a marine clam that lives in shallow warm water.
Exactly where these beads are made is not known by this writer. They are used
from Senegal to Cameroon. (Liu 1976>6b. )
The enterprising Czechs came to west Africa to observe what beads were popular
there in the 1800's. They took examples of these beads back to the bead makers
in Bohemia where they were copied in white glass. This made life much easier
for the native shell bead fabricators.
See Robert Liu's book Collectible Beads for reference. Also The Compendium of
Seashells by Abbott and Dance, p.291.
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Hone your bead history and identification skills by
visiting the Bead Collector Network. Their vast library of beads, on-line forum,
bead trade and other features make this web site one of the best international references
for beads.
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