Faking It – Plastic Imitations of Organic Materials
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The August 4th Bead Society meeting will feature Rosanna Falabella, as our speaker. She will talk about fakes and plastic imitations of materials in Jewelry.  Many examples of the fakes along side the "real thing" will be shown for ivory, pearl, amber, tortoiseshell, coral, and jet. Check out the following pictures! 

August 4th 7 pm 
​Zoom Meeting ID: 899 883 2615, Passcode: Beads

​Rare and precious natural materials used for jewelry and other personal adornment have
been imitated since antiquity. The first major invention in this area was glass, which
was used to substitute for naturally occurring minerals and gems. The development of
semi-synthetic and fully synthetic materials, starting in the late 1800s, brought the art of
faking it to a whole new level, as impressive imitations of many natural materials were
made possible.

This presentation will give a brief history of the most important man-made plastics used
to imitate natural materials. Many examples of the fakes along side the "real thing" will
be shown. Some of the techniques used to identify the different plastics used for imitations
will be presented.

All are welcome. 
Bead Society business meeting at 6:30 pm, same Zoom info! ​
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The Bead Society has a collection of about seventy books on beading, jewelry and jewelry materials. We are in the process of downsizing the library, so if anyone is interested, please contact us. The picture shows some of the covers of books that we have. 

In 2017 the Bead Society set up a lending library. We had gotten some wonderful donations from members and former members. In fact, the daughter of Helen Sjoberg donated a huge collection of her mother's bead and jewelry books. We even acquired some books such as Robert Lui's book, Photography of Personal Adornment, Beads: A Reference and Price Guide by Sindi Schloss and the African Twilight  by  Carol Beckwith and Angela Fisher whose film we premiered in 2019. .

We input the titles of the books through a service called, LibraryThing. One can browse the titles or see a listing of covers like the illustration above. The Library can be found at http://www.librarything.com/catalog/Bead_Society. Check it out! 

Kay Deeney would bring some of the books to meetings, and some members borrowed them until the following meeting. At one time, the Bead Society was very engaged in helping members obtain interesting books about beads. We recently came upon some Bead Society books that were to be sold to members. They are also listed in LibraryThing. Many of these are how-to-bead books such as Dimensional Flowers, Leaves & Vines or The Complete Guide to Beading Techniques. 
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Take a look at the listing of books by going to LibraryThing. If you are interested in obtaining any of these books, please send a message to admin@beadsocietyla.org.