Surprising Facts about Pearls
​The April Program Meeting of the Bead Society will be held in person in the Uruapan Room of the Veterans Memorial Building in Culver City on Tuesday, April 7th at 7:00 pm Pacific Time. Normally we meet on the first Wednesday of the month, but due to holidays and scheduling, we’ll meet on Tuesday! Our speaker will be in person only, no Zoom. 
 
We welcome back Renee Newmann, author and gemologist. She spoke last year about Diamonds!  She will regale us with some fascinating information about Pearls! Here’s a taste:
A 112-carat abalone pearl was found in Sonoma County, California in 1990 by the late Wesley Rankin. After the pearl was appraised at $144,000 by John Latendresse, Wes decided to go into the natural pearl business and started the Pacific Coast Pearls company.
Abalone fishing has been illegal in California since 2018 in order to save the dwindling population of abalone. However, it is still allowed in Baja California, Mexico during non-spawning months. Besides briefly discussing natural pearls from California and Mexico, Renée’s PowerPoint presentation will also include other topics such as

• The American pearl rush
• The highest priced pearls
• Bead nucleated freshwater pearls
• South Sea pearls that resemble Chinese freshwater baroque pearls and how to distinguish them
• How Australia became the first country to produce cultured saltwater round pearls
• How pearl oysters improve our atmosphere and the oceans.

Renee Newman GG (GIA) is the author of 16 books on jewelry and gems. Her interest in pearls developed when she was an international tour director and visited Japan, China, Australia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and French Polynesia. After obtaining her GG from GIA, she became a gemologist and jewelry control manager for the Josam Diamond Trading Corporation in downtown Los Angeles. Even though their focus was on diamonds, they realized that mounting diamonds with colored gems and pearls gave them a wider variety of jewelry to sell and higher profit margins. Armed with trade experience and gemological credentials, Newman decided to create books that helped readers visually evaluate the quality of gems.

Her latest book is Pearls: Their History, Sources, Types & Qualities. The books will be available for sale at the meeting for a discounted price. Bring cash or check. You can access more information about Renée and her books here. You can also connect with her on Instagram @reneenewmangg and Facebook. 
 
The Bead Society will bring some of their pearls from the Bead Shack if you are interested in looking at them! The Business Meeting will be at 6:30 pm on Zoom as well as in person. The meeting itself is in person only! So be sure to join us!  

Topic: TBS April Business Meeting
Time: Apr 7, 2026 06:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Join Zoom Meeting, (business meeting only)

Meeting ID: 899 883 2615
Passcode: Beads

Thanks to Renee Newmann for the pictures and text. 
 
*1 Bead-nucleated Chinese freshwater pearls (3–3.5mm), which became available in 2022. Pearls and photo from Betty Sue King of Kings Ransom.
 
*2. A 112-carat abalone pearl was found in Sonoma County, California in 1990 by the late West Rankin. Photo from Pacific Coast Pearls.

​The March 4th Bead Society Program Meeting will be a Sharing Session on Zoom for attendees to showcase their Earrings and/or Bracelet designs. All are welcome to participate.

You can show and tell by holding up your objects. Or you can send pictures to Kay and she will put them in a slide show for viewing. Or you can share your desktop, and treat viewers to some of your work! You can be prepared to discuss the design and fabrication of your medium, challenges and successes.  It will be an educational experience for all! 

Join Zoom Meeting
Topic: March Program Meeting
Time: Mar 4, 2026 6:30 PM Pacific Time (US and Canada)
Meeting ID: 899 883 2615
Passcode: Beads

TBS Business meeting at 6:30 pm.  Join us! 

The February 4th Program Meeting of the Bead Society is going to feature the African Twilight. Some of you will remember that we had a Gala event back in 2019 with Alan Donovan from Africa introducing the video. We are celebrating Black History Month by revisiting this video! The two women, Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher traveled all over Africa for over 45 years. They produced 17 books about various aspects of their travels. We will be showcasing a talk the two women did in 2022 at the GLEX Summit (Global Exploration Summit). Their two volume book, African Twilight will be available to peruse!

We will be meeting both in person and on Zoom. 
Veterans Memorial Complex, Senior Center, Room C71, 7 pm
The Senior Center is at 4095 Overland Ave, Culver City, CA . It is just across the street from the Vets Memorial Building. Parking is available in the lot behind the building.  

​Feb 4th, 7 pm PT
Zoom information is Meeting ID: 899 883 2615, Passcode: Beads.
TBS Business meeting at 6:15 pm.  Join us! 

Some additional resources from YouTube and the web:

African Twilight: Vanishing Rituals & Ceremonies - Angela Fisher & Carol Beckwith
Cuyamungue Institute
An interview with the two women with staff from the Cuyamungue Institute and guests. 
2 hours, 23 minutes

Interview: Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher | National Geographic
A clever feast spares the lives of photographers Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher during a harrowing trip to Surmaland near the Ethiopian-Sudanese border.
6.23 minutes

African Twilight GALA NIGHT OF THE CENTURY
The documentary by Reality media Online of he spectacular launch of the double volume book of the vanishing rituals and ceremonies of the African continent by Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher, with a carnival of Music, dance, costume and fashion created from vanishing handwoven and printed textiles of African continent. African Heritage House, Mar 3, 2019. This was the documentary we viewed by DVD back in 2019. 
1 hour, 3 minutes

AFRICAN TWILIGHT: VANISHING RITUAL & CEREMONIES - Carol Beckwith & Angela Fisher
GLEX Summit 2022
This is the video we watched during the meeting, 

Africa Online Museum
Würzburg, Germany

​You can find other interviews with Carol and Angela by searching by their names. 

​The Upper Midwest Bead Society (UMBS), TOHO Beads, The Japanese Beading Association, TeamTOHO, and Lotus Beads and Jewelry are joining forces to take the TOHO Peace Chain Project to new lengths by actually connecting them together and creating the longest beaded Peace Chain in the world!  UMBS is inviting us to participate! 

"There are many ways you can join our Peace Chain Project. We have a one-year goal. We would like everyone around the world to gather together friends, family, and new and old acquaintances to join us in this monumental effort by working together to make a one-mile-long beaded Peace Chain with the goal of promoting peace."

"We hope you will think peaceful thoughts as you enjoy making these rings, thereby infusing the rings themselves with calm and happy feelings."

"Your segments of chain will be connected to ours throughout the year to create 1 mile of chain. This chain will stretch all the way around the Mall of America! We invite you to come from all over the world to the Mall of America on August 6th, 2026, to bring segments of your Peace Chain with you and join us to commemorate the Day of Peace for a "Grand Connection." During this event, we will connect all of the remaining Peace Chain segments together."

So, the Bead Society is proposing that we have some Beading gatherings where we can work on the Peace Rings. Each ring is very small, and doesn't use a lot of beads. The directions are fairly straightforward. You don't need to know any elaborate stitches. There is even a YouTube video. The Bead Society has lots of colors of seed beads we can employ. If you are interested, you can contact Kay at kayd at beadsocietyla.org.  If you would like to host one of these events, let us know. 

The January 7th TBS Program Meeting will feature Margie Akin talking about Collecting from an Anthropologist's Point of View. Margie has an extensive background in teaching at UC Riverside, CSU San Bernadino and the University of Redlands. Margie is a Cultural and Linguistic Services Specialist. 

The event will be in person, and on Zoom. We will be meeting in the Uruapan room of the Veterans Memorial Building at 7:00 pm PT.  Zoom information is Meeting ID: 899 883 2615, Passcode: Beads.  

Beads have been collected since women and men walked the earth. "Beads were probably the first durable ornaments humans possessed ... " *

TBS Business meeting at 6:30 pm.  Join us! 

*Liu, Robert K, Foreword, The History of Beads: from 100,000 B.C. to the Present. Dubin, Lois Sherr. Abrams: New York, rev ed., 2009, 

Here's a link to the Press Release from California State University, Northridge.

To find other Pow wow events, you can try searching the Pow Wows Calendar from PowWows.com.  

The website for Calexplornia has lists of California Pow Wows. Unfortunately, it may not be as timely as one wants. 

Another website specifically for California is NewsfromNativeCalifornia. It is broader than just Pow wows. For example, there is some interesting information about rock art locations in California. 

In addition, another website on Southern California Pow wows comes from the San Manual Pow Wow and is linked  here. 

If you know of other websites that have useful Pow wow information, let us know in the Comments. 

The Bead Society sponsored two field trips in September to the Bowers Museum and the Broad Museum. The group went to the Bowers Museum in Santa Ana to The Bead Society of OC - Bead Sale in the outside courtyard and to the exhibit, World of the Terracotta Warriors at the Museum. World of the Terracotta Warriors comprises over 110 newly uncovered treasures including Terracotta Warriors, chariot regalia, jade and gold adornments, bronze vessels, and immersive digital experiences. In a landmark collaboration with the Shaanxi Cultural Heritage Promotion Center and esteemed museums and archaeological institutions across Shaanxi Province, These artifacts make their North American debut, offering audiences unprecedented glimpses into China before and during the Qin dynasty. Below are some pictures from the exhibit taken by attendees. 

In addition, several Bead Society members went to the Broad Museum in downtown Los Angeles to see the exquisite works of Jeffrey Gibson: the space in which to place me. These sculptures were stunning with intricate beadwork. The colors were so vibrant!  According to the Museum,  Gibson's artwork are "all reflecting the artist’s radical vision for a future in which all people are seen, accepted, and loved."  The show came to The Broad directly from the 60th Venice Biennale (2024), one of the most prestigious exhibitions of visual art in the world, where Gibson made history as the first Indigenous artist to represent the USA with a solo show. The exhibit has moved on, but for more information you can click on this link from the Broad Museum.  The video installation of She Never Dances Alone is also available on the website. 

And here are some photographs from members of the Bead Society on this marvelous work. ​

The Bead Society regularly hosts field trips to various museums and events. There are plans to visit the Autry Museum in November. 

The Bead Society Cultural Arts and Bead Show was held on November 1st at the auditorium of the Veterans Memorial Complex in Culver City. In addition to beads and finished jewelry, we also had pottery, clothing, photography and exquisite origami objects. See the pictures! The attendance was good, both vendors and attendees expressed their pleasure. In addition, the Bead Society Booth filled four tables with beads, supplies and jewelry and made a decent return. We even acquired some donations from some of the attendees. We offered  complementary giftwrapping at this event. We had paper, ribbon, bows. Some people event decorated gift cards. We had demonstrations by Deidre Green and Janice Metz. 
​
Here are some pictures of the event. We even included some before shots, so you can see how the auditorium transformed! 

The Bead Society is very grateful to our volunteers who helped out at the Bead Shack Table, the Membership Table, and at the various Demo tables. And of course, the Bazaar/Pop Up Committee headed by Sylvia Humphrey deserves a lot of credit. Raul Soliz, our helper and his daughter, Bianca were very helpful! 

Beadmaking in Glass, a World of Techniques

The diversity of glass techniques that are used to create beads is much bigger than often thought.  Pretty much every glass technique you can think of, has also been applied to beadmaking. Lampwork beads, furnace wound beads, drawn beads, molded beads, coldworked beads, blown beads: there are many ways to make a bead. In this presentation, we will travel around the world to see, for example, beads made at a wood fired furnace, seed bead production in India, lampworking in Indonesia and the making of molded beads in the Czech Republic. You will never look at a glass bead the same again!

Floor Kaspers is our speaker, all the way from the Netherlands via Zoom! Join the Bead Society in person at the Veterans Memorial Complex in the Uruapan room or via Zoom. 

November 5th, 7 pm Pacific Time

Meeting ID: 899 883 2615
Passcode: Beads

Business meeting at 6:30 pm.  Join us! 

The October 2nd Bead Society Program Meeting will be held via Zoom at 7 pm on Symbolism in Global Jewelry. Note that this meeting is a Thursday, not our usual Wednesday meeting time. 

Thursday, Oct 2nd, 2025 6:30 PM Pacific Time
(Program at 7 pm, Business meeting at 6:30 pm. )
Meeting ID: 899 883 2615
Passcode: Beads
               
We are in for a great treat for the October 2, meeting, with Sindi Schloss, gemologist, appraiser and educator, talking about Symbolism in Global Jewelry.  Sindi is a return speaker for our group, she is very knowledgeable, lively and entertaining. As Sindi will share with us, “symbolic thought defines us as 'modern man'. Jewelry is one of the first indicators and examples of symbolic thought and predates rock art by 90,000 years!”  This presentation will examine primary symbols witnessed by early humans and translated into jewelry as wearable symbols. Not only will this presentation expand your worldview, but give you a greater appreciation and ability to interpret purpose and meaning of jewelry.
​

Sindi Schloss, is a graduate gemologist, professional jewelry appraiser, jewelry historian and owner operator of a school of gemology.  Her forty years of experience in valuation science, gemology and teaching, as well as extensive world travel and involvement with the past The Bead Museum in Glendale, Arizona, has given Sindi a unique perspective and knowledge of global jewelry.  Her ability to condense archaeology, history and gemology into a simplified fun format, has made her a popular presenter. 

All are welcome! Join us! 
​The Business meeting will be at 6:30 pm.  ​