Hello Hans,

I call your attention to the long presentation I posted in 2009, after my trip to Java in 2008. Part II. It can be read here:

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=iYz&aK=64610&iZz=64610&gV=0&kQz=&aO=1&iWz=0

I am also attaching screenshots of one segment, in which I show a bead that I would compare to your bead. It is a figural specimen, made in ochre glass. I would compare your bead to this one.

Jamey

I note there is a recent Javanese millefiori bird bead, copying ancient jatim, included as an "ojime." Talk about self-deluded.... JDA.

Just a word of caution - I've bought from TimeLine Auctions before and the beads turned out to be modern copies. They looked good online, but not so much in person. I'm sure they sell some real stuff too, but my sense is they have a lot of fakes mixed in.

Abe

In the present instance, I think it is possible to say there are no convincing reproductions of this material.

The only way an imitation would be received would be if the necklace were switched with something else.

Nevertheless, in the past year or so there have been some editions of similar beads from Java, that are (of course) being misrepresented as "ancient." However, they are under my radar because they are visually different from the beads they attempt to copy. Plus, there are multiple numbers of the same beads (in a strand)—which is not a common finding among bazaar strands and made-up necklaces of ancient beads, such as we have here. This (matched strands) is what we see when new editions of beads come out of current factory situations. Down the road, someone may TRY to copy the look of the present necklace (and those I have documented already). But I am reasonably confident it has not happened yet.

Jamey

I've been seeing a lot of beads with this same surface finish on eBay - new beads (India or Java?) treated by acid or tumbling or both, to look like they have aged. Not very convincing IMHO.

See recent examples on eBay:
183326450522
183326450525
352405694729

These are repros of Venetian trade beads. The seller is mis-representing them as originals. Probably what you were told also.

The fact that they are so identical in wear and patina, the colors that are not quite right and the stringing on cotton all point to modern replicas made in Java to me.

I think the answers to this question are fairly self-evident. The Pros are that you get to have and enjoy some of the most-beautiful and well-made beads circulating in recent times. They are impressive products, in their own right(s).

The Cons are that MANY people are delightfully uninformed about reproductions—and have been conned into thinking the beads they have bought are much older, more valuable, and rarer than is the truth (as I have remarked numerous times).

So, the pros are based on impressive esthetics; while the cons are based on misrepresentation and rip-off mentality.

Thankfully, BCN Forum exists to counter misinformation and deception, by informing the reading public that these scams are being perpetrated. And all the while we get to view photographs of great stuff along the way. JDA.

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=%2Fopenforum%2F&tK=java+Beadman&wT=1&yVz=yTz&aO=1&hIz=5000&hJz=4000&cmd=find&by=&xcfgfs=tK-wT-yVz-aO-hKz

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=%2Fopenforum%2F&tK=java+Beadman&wT=1&yVz=yTz&aO=1&hIz=4000&hJz=3000&cmd=find&by=&xcfgfs=tK-wT-yVz-aO-hKz

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=%2Fopenforum%2F&tK=java+Beadman&wT=1&yVz=yTz&aO=1&hIz=3000&hJz=2000&cmd=find&by=&xcfgfs=tK-wT-yVz-aO-hKz

A variety of foils have been used for decorating glass beads. The Venetians have also used an application of gold powder, that produced a somewhat different effect—and may have extended the use of gold, such that less actual metal was required to make a good lustrous appearance. But in most cases the foil or powder was covered by glass which protected it from vaporizing entirely.

Regarding avventurina glass: This is sometime characterized as having resulted from "copper filings being added to the glass." This is a great over-simplification. However the copper was added to the glass, the copper itself was melted into the glass batch. Then the batch was held at the correct temperature for a required length of time, allowing the copper to crystalize—forming avventurina glass. Seen under a microscope, these millions or billions of crystals have the form of perfect tiny pyramids of copper, or as two pyramids fused base-to-base. They are not merely "filings."

In recent years, at Java, where many reproductions of old beads have been made over the previous nearly-30 years, some beadmakers have made versions of gold-sandwich glass and foil beads—and they now use aluminum foil to substitute for silver or gold foil. So it is possible to use aluminum foil to make foil beads. (I was so-informed on my first trip to Java in 2008. And this was reconfirmed by a serious bead importer from Holland a few years later.)

JDA.

The bird cane inserts are really nice!

Hi Floor & Peter,

I'm certain they will be pleased to hear your presentation in Borneo.
Are you planning to travel to other destinations in South East Asia?

Fondly, Fred

For now, it will be Borneo, Java, Bali and Kuala Lumpur. And my sister in Australia.
I am hoping to do a major trip again next year: Japan, China, India.....but that will depend on the money and time I have next year.

The aim is to have a book with lots of pictures, art and stories, but also an historical timeline of the production of 'Beads from the torch'.

When I come across a listing that is wrong I often tell the seller that their pretty necklace or bracelet is made up of glass beads from India/Java/China/Czechoslovakia. But I also educate them by providing examples of other correct auctions that are running. This way the sellers LEARN from their mistakes and feel good about it. Simply admonishing a seller for their mistakes puts them on the defensive and they learn nothing from the exchange. Additionally, many sellers are selling thrift store finds or estate pieces and have no real clue as to what they have. Gauging from listings on eBay an amateur seller/buyer would conclude that almost all of the glass beads/jewelry in the world are made in Venice! So far 90% of the time I get a thank you and they either change the listing or remove it. The con side is getting blocked from ever purchasing from the seller again.

i'd like to see the holes, of course...

I believe I have correctly identified these beads as products from India, as assumed because their canes were manufactured via the hot-strip method.

Nevertheless, I have not seen these particular beads in real life—to examine them. I have only seen thousands and thousands of other Indian drawn pseudo-chevron beads (beginning in 1985).

Until three years ago, many or most modern drawn Indian chevron beads were poorly-made. The canes were/are poor; and the beads made from the canes were/are poor. Three years ago, Indian chevron beads improved greatly in terms of the beads. The external shapes are more-carefully rendered (!). The canes remain similar poorly-made hot-strip canes. But the over-all appearance is much improved.

I have demonstrated, here and elsewhere, that recent companies in Java now effectively imitate beads from antiquity, from Europe (Venice!), and FROM INDIA.

Because the present beads are more-well-made than many Indian beads, and because I have not seen them in real life, I have to include THE POSSIBILITY that they might be Javanese beads. Added to that, I have not been to Java since 2010, so there MIGHT BE any number of Javanese beads I have not seen yet. I am not in a position to be 100% sure. And since I am CAREFUL when I am not 100% sure of something, I include the possibility that these beads that appear to be Indian MIGHT have a different origin.

JDA.

Thanks, Abe, for showing these, and Fred for digging up the prices.

The Chinese texts are mainly descriptive, with some rather poetic stuff about the connections to the divine through the symmetry of the patterns. Nothing really about provenance except to refer to 173 similar (?? beads having been excavated from a Warring States tomb near Suizhou.

I can't see any obvious reason to doubt their authenticity. There are a few beads of the same exquisite quality in equally good condition in museum collections. I'll attach a couple of photos, the first from the Shanghai Museum (photo by Robert Liu) and another from the Miho Museum (the most beautiful museum in the world, incidentally). The pictures in transmitted light are really convincing.

BUT one also has to ask how reliable the auction house is. They're a fairly new business (nothing wrong with that); they specialize in jade, but some of the archaic jade they have listed doesn't convince me completely, and sometimes they seem to have quite a few unsold lots. The Chinese auction scene is so complicated, with elements of money-laundering amidst government attempts to suppress corruption, and there are bound to be unanswered question about who owned them and how did they get them, who is selling and why, and who is buying and why.

Meanwhile, I'm sure the glass beadmakers in Jember are already hard at work figuring out how to make convincing copies (if they haven't done so already!).

Best,

Will

From what I know, these are the best copies of Warring States beads coming out of Java at the moment.
Interesting, but not convincing.

I visited the Shanghai museum when they had an exhibit on Warring States beads. I took pictures of all the beads and the digital presentation they had. If you like a PDF of these pictures, let me know. It is a large file, that I can send to your email with Wetransfer.

Hi Art,

Great question. It has really made me think.

I love the photos of your workshop. An obsessive maniac’s perhaps, but more certainly a space where beauty is helped to appear.

I think a lot of workshops in the ancient past may have looked very similar (though with fewer yoghourt containers or egg cartons probably). Generally and with a few exceptions, we have very little knowledge as to the conditions under which beads were made or about the social relationships between the beadmakers and the consumers. We can only hypothesize and extrapolate from the fragments of information we may have about a specific culture.

I say “a specific culture” because my own sense is that every locale generated substantially different production methods and trade relationships. Already, in ancient times, trade networks existed on an almost global scale; coins made in Rome show up in what is now southern Vietnam, beads made in Java are found in Alexandria, and vice versa. But it was very different from the way in which cybertechnologies have enabled a kind of global homogenization in transnational production methods that eliminates the individualized or localized solution.

Let me give four examples of how different those separate localized solutions once were.

My first is Ban Chiang in Northeastern Thailand. We’re fortunate to know more about the social relationships of the people who lived there in the first millennium BCE than at any other site in SE Asia, thanks to the brilliant analyses of grave sites and skeletal remains by Michael Pietruzewsky from the University of Hawaii. We know that this was a culture that lasted for more than 2,000 years while being non-hierarchical and non-aggressive, and with substantial gender equality. This apparently isolated inland community was not cut off at all in fact, and the people who lived there showed an ongoing curiosity with regard to technologies that were initiated elsewhere and a wonderful capacity to adapt them to availaible local resources - bronze production, rice cultivation, glass-and bead-making, cotton and quite possibly silk production. These weren’t imported as foreign im-plants; we know that because of the absence of foreign iconographies in the things they produced. New technologies were adapted for local purposes. Bronze was the most valued decorative medium and their knowledge of lost-wax casting outstripped that of bronze-makers in China. Glass was used for beads and ear ornaments, and it’s highly probable that women worked alongside men in the workshops. The objects they produced were valued, but not particularly as status symbols, and they would have been distributed within the wider family, or exchanged and bartered locally for other necessary items - rice, textiles, vegetables, game, pork, fish, bronze and pottery.

Images: blue glass ear ornament (55mm); red glass disc beads (d. 13-18mm).

Okay, now my third example, different again.

We all know about trade wind beads, or Indo-Pacific beads as Peter Francis chose to call them: they were produced from the fourth century BCE to at least the twelfth century CE and possibly beyond, at at least nine - and quite probably several more - production sites around the south-eastern Indian ocean. They were the most widely traded beads in the world until the height of Venetian production in the nineteenth century, and they occur in large quantities in a great many different cultures from West Africa to Japan. They are commonplace and I love them for their commonplaceness. Every time I pick up a strand I imagine the sheer wonder they generated in the people who first saw them.

Why were they produced (unlike, say, Venetian beads) in so many different places? Well, sea trade was dangerous in those times, particularly in that part of the world, so we have our first example in ancient times of a widely and successfully decentralized production network - perhaps even a kind of franchise system. The beads vary in size and there is a range of glass and colourants, but the pleasure they give lies in their uniformity not their variety. Peter Francis believed that they were produced in workshops run by expatriate south Indian craftsmen (lower caste men with no social standing), and though there is no evidence for that assumption, it seems quite likely. The makers were probably controlled by the businessmen who controlled the trading networks.

At the same time, they influenced the drawn-bead-making technology of beads that were produced much further east in the eastern tip of Java. These jatims were clearly entirely different in their social function from Indo-Pacific beads and tied much more to a local market and culture. They were luxury goods, as they were also in the countries to which they were exported, not only because of their size and ostentation; beads that are extremely difficult to make and require expensive, rare raw materials cannot be mass-market products. We know virtually nothing about the culture that somehow enabled their production, but I would guess that their makers were treated with substantial respect, particularly if the beads were associated with religious practices.

Images: Indo Pacific beads; very large Jatim pelangi (41mm) with devitrified, crackled surface and old root growth adhering to the cracks.

and p.s.: Bali silver, not so old but beautifull

Marinus,

How did you reach the conclusion that this piece was made in Bali?
Wondering whether the headdress on the female figure may be Thai.
Whereas the clouds remind me of patterns found on Javanese batiks.
Deciphering iconography, what are your clues and considerations?

Thanks, Fred

Dear Frederic 11
Since 1974, I regularly travel to Bali also buying silver over there , you did found this type of work especially around Celuk (Patra's family).
Like the Mahabharata, the Ramayana is the cornerstone of the Hindhuistische culture. Thailand is a Buddhistic country, the hilltribe silver is mostly haevy, Java is mainly Muslim, they don't like this kind of art. I'm 99.9% sure that both the chain and the amulet are Balinese, around 50 years old.
But estimation remains done with a wet finger.
Yours sincerely
Marinus

Why not

It's a lovely pendant, Fred - a very nice find.

I think it's a bit misleading to give hill-tribe silver as an example of Thai silver; it's a completely different tradition. Rather, we'd have to be looking at the silver made in Ayutthaya and, following that tradition, in Bangkok. But having said that, I agree that it looks more like Balinese work than Thai. One complicating factor is the stylised clouds that surround Hanuman and Sita, because they obviously have their roots in Chinese Qing dynasty decorative patterns in porcelain and embroidery. So there are Indian, Thai, Javanese/Balinese and Chinese elements all in play here!

As well, Fred seems quite correct to me to point out that Sita's headdress is more Thai than Indonesian. The costumes of the Ramakien dancers in traditional khon dance in Thailand and wayang wong in Java/Bali have their origins in the court costumes of the Ayutthaya and Majapahit periods respectively. The headdresses are modelled directly on royal crowns. I'll attach two images to show the differences, both of them Buddhist rather than Hindu since in both cultures gold figurines were almost always Buddhist: the first is of a gold figure of Tara from Java (which was thought originally when it was first excavated to be of Sita); and the second is of a crowned Buddha from Ayutthaya in Thailand, circa C17.

So, as usual, I find myself adding to the questions, not to the answers!

Best,

Will

i got these in Tucson in 2015 they were threaded with some other obviously Indonesian beads, and at a guess i think they were all made in Indonesia in the 1980s. they are mostly 35 millemetres or about 1.4 inches long

I wonder how such rather big beads had been worn traditionally and by whom and when? Possibly too heavy (and precious) as daily jewelry, especially since a full necklace must have been rather heavy.

Authentic pieces like this ones - the two on the left side are exceptionally wonderful collectibles - never really got the full appreciation they deserve, I fear (not in the West, that is).

Another pity the fact that all this "perfect copies" seem to have destroyed the market. Jatim beads are not my speciality, but it is not only for that reason I would not feel confident to decide between old and new specimen. Speaks for the contemporary makers, not my knowledge, I guess!

Still wonderful beads - even the new ones!

- Thanks, Jamey, for the images. The beads in the lower photo are in Magical Ancient Beads, aren't they? They're lovely beads and rare; the use of different coloured eye canes is quite unusual, less than 1% of production I estimate. But in the modern reproductions they're everywhere, I guess because they're thought to be pretty and there's a demand for prettiness. The Lindstrom beads are very strange, both the surface and the apparently random mix of canes. Are they constructed in the traditional way?

- Scott, I've been looking for an example of what I was talking about with regard to the area around the perforation on the bead on the left hand side of your photo. I think what we see there is a relatively new way of trying to imitate the marks that were sometimes left when a bead was separated from a longer cane. I hadn't seen it before, but I just found these fake pelangis (first attachment) on eBay from a Thai seller; they're described there as "Majapahit", and it's the same kind of effect as on the one you showed. For an authentic bead that this is trying to copy, see page 106 in Magical Ancient Beads.

- Juergen: These Jatims were not buried with bodies so we don't know how they were worn (unlike a lot of mainland Southeast Asian ancient beads). The size of the larger ones seems to suggest that they were worn occasionally and as status symbols, like many bronze pendants from the region. (The huge Hellenistic-era beads that were made in southern Russia and Ukraine are found in association with horse harnesses in burial mounds in the Caucasus - another kind of status in nomadic cultures).

Regarding the question of whether the availability of good reproductions has frightened the market away from Jatims and reduced their value, I'm really not sure. It hasn't happened with dzi, has it? I don't pay much attention to bead prices, but I do think there's been a drift away from glass to stone, and this has affected the market for ancient glass beads generally.

The second attachment is of some Indo-Pacific and Jatim beads (and possibly some ancient Byzantine-era imports also) that were dug up further west of the usual Javanese sites where Jatims are found - quite unusual beads also.

Best,

Will

Any literature or papers on the matter of beadmaking? How was this technique recovered, when and by whom? Is that technique confirmed or a hypothesis? Is this the only known industry who made beads that way?

The manufacture of beads from canes is just....wooow, an enormous achievment. Wonder how they are able to make very simelar types now at the torch. Or do they still use this old technique, you showed in your other post?

There is a linear distance of 9350 miles between the two places, but a very simelar technique has obviously been used in the two industries of Java and Mauritania, to create eye-beads.

Beyond fascinating!

I'm wondering how other collectors feel about the practice of polishing ancient beads. I'm in two minds about it myself. With almost all other antiques that I can think of, from coins to bronze to furniture, it's frowned upon, and can have a substantial negative impact on the artefact's value. The same can be said for ancient stone beads (though there's a bit of leeway with ancient jade from China as long as the repolishing doesn't affect the patina).

But when jatims were introduced to the North American market in - when was it? I'm guessing - the late '80s or early '90s, it seems that a lot of them were quite heavily polished, and it appears that this enhanced their value in comparison to weathered examples. I had very little interest in beads at that time, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see evidence of the same practice on the same scale with ancient beads from west Asia. Does anyone here have any thoughts about why that was the case? Is it perhaps because the excavated condition of jatims was often so poor as a result of the volcanic soil in which many of them were buried that there wouldn't have been much of a market for them without their being polished? That may be one reason, but there must be others, surely.

Later in the 90s and early 2000s, as the new copies from Java became better, the practice seems to have diminished, perhaps because the ancient wear was now a simple way of separating the authentic from the fake. More recently, as the modern copyists found new ways to age their beads, that simple criterion in its turn no longer applies. Nowadays, I'm quite happy to find a bead with old polishing marks because, ironically, it's more likely to be authentic!

I've also noticed, that of the authentic jatims I've bought from North American sources a good 50% have been polished, whereas it's fewer than 10% with the ones acquired in Indonesia itself, or indeed with beads that I've seen in Indonesian private and public collections. Ultimately, I think I prefer beads that carry their history with them, and I don't much care for the glossy finish on some, though not all, of the beads from the Lindstrom collection. It's too much like cosmetic surgery!

But in the end it's very hard to be definitive about this, isn't it? One of my own beads that pleases me most is a huge (49 mm) pelangi that was polished (though not to a glossy sheen) when it was collected by a friend in Java in 1991 or '92 (attached here). But another is a large (39 mm) blue and white pelangi that is severely damaged and fragmentary (next attachment). I value it almost as much.

Cheers,

Will

they or some of them may originally have been made in China or elsewhere -

i have some in an image from my new book, p. 8:

the short loop to the right with a small bell has old heirloom beads but the long traditional strand consists of fairly recently made beads in the locally favoured patterns -most distinct are the newly made black oblates decorated with twisted-cane circles or eyes on a string of their own, "Lukut Sekala" beads. Glass skillfully lamp-worked in villages in Java- which have been visited by some BCN members ...

however my computer doesn't want to let me reduce the image size so now i'm not able to show the picture...

Hi everyone,

I’m later even than usual getting into this. I’ve been in Thailand, celebrating new year with friends and family and only got back to the frozen north yesterday. Climate shock indeed.

Reading this thread, I’m surprised at how little regard there has been for the opinions of Jamey Allen, who has paid more attention to these Dayak heirloom beads than anyone else, or to the conclusions of Billy Steinberg who surely must know more about Venetian beads and their cultural imapct than most of the rest of us combined. I’m not saying we have to agree with them, far from it, but it’s foolish to dismiss what they say without a reasonable and well-researched discussion.

And I’m astonished that nobody has referred to Robert Liu’s articles or Peter Francis’s Asia’s Maritime Bead Trade (I’ll say it again, “the best bead book, ever, period”), or Heidi Munan’s work on Borneo beads (she has helpful pictures too), or, until yesterday, Manik Mank di Indonesia, because these would be the obvious sources to begin with in trying to figure out where these beads really come from.

I should say, as a disclaimer, that I know next to nothing about Venetian beads, and very little about post-Ming dynasty Chinese beads. I stay away, as much as possible, from heirloom beads because I think they should remain with the people who value them most and who only sell them because of the economic inequalities between ourselves and them. But I do spend a bit of time each year in Java, looking at, and for, ancient pottery, beads and bronze. When I’m there I live with friends quite near to Jember where a lot of the modern glass beads are made. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to them, except for the copies of ancient beads, but I must say, these don’t look like modern Indonesian reproductions to me. I have a lot of respect for Thomas(TASART)’s knowledge, and I’d love to see his evidence, or Juergen’s anonymous source’s also, for saying that they are. I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

But I am initially convinced by Coin-Coin’s scrupulous narrative about these beads’ provenance, and if it is correct, there’s even less likelihood of them having been products of the modern Indonesian glass industry which had very little presence or reach, if any, before the date when these were purchased, 1967.

So back to the beginning, where do these beads come from? Clearly, there’s no simple answer. I believe Mr. Steinberg when he says, on the basis of his own collections, that many of them are Venetian. As for the others, Peter Francis thinks they come from South China, possibly Quanzhou. That’s a tempting hypothesis. We tend to forget that the ports on the north coast of Borneo were major intermediate stops in the trade between China, India and Europe from Tang dynasty times on. Since Peter made that suggestion, there’s been very little new evidence to back it up. But China is a huge and inventive counttry that has always been in the technological forefront, and I wouldn’t write it off, though personally, I think the chances of Quanzhou having been a bead-making centre are slight; Guangzhou is much more likely. Jamey has suggested Japan, and that seems a real possibility to me. India shouldn’t be written off either.

Personally, I’m intrigued by the beads that Juergen likes least; the combed polychrome tubular beads on a green base. They seem to be later versions, perhaps early twentieth century (?), of the combed beads that are so valued by the Paiwan people in Taiwan. Quite similar beads have also been found in small quantities in Yunnan and are dated to the Yuan dynasty (I’ll attach a pic of two of them that were given to me by a very kind friend). I think the most likely source for the modern versions of these beads would have to be South China, or possibly Japan.

I’ll attach another, totally unbeady, image of the kind of thing I go to Java for, the head on top of a Dong Son period bronze limepot that dates from 500 BCE to 300CE. Actually it does have a suspension loop on top, so I guess it could be worn as a pendant!

Best,

Will

Hello Rosanna;

The bead is smaller than any of my Jatim repos. It really does not look like any of my reproduction Jatim I have. As I said. I sent photos of the bead to several of the BCN's members. None of them said anything about reproductions. I purchased the bead from a BCN member. Maybe that member will remember the sale. To be honest. I have forgotten who or whom I purchased the bead from.

Sincerely
Thomas Mercer

Hi Thomas,
I just walked through my collection of Jatim repro's and found some beads with approximately the same measurements as yours and the same technique but in different colors.
I suspect from the pictures you showed, the bead is a modern java bead made after 1990.
For some repro's I bought round 2004 in the Netherlands I paid the same price as your bead.

"The measurements are 18mm X 15mm with 3mm hole on one side and 4.5mm hole on the other side."

well, most of my java repro's have a straight perforation, but some don't.

Can you post pictures?

I don't have much time to take pictures at the moment but here is one archive box.
All beads made after the year 2000 on East Java. Some are artificially aged, others are brand new.
I admire the craftsmanship.

...it goes right over the head. Given that one's head is not too big.

"Kalabubu, a traditional necklace for men in Nias culture. Kalabubu is very unic crafstmanchip because made from coconut disk. Nowadays, tourists often buy this necklace as souvenir when they visit Nias Island. This photo was taken by Mr. Java Yafaowolo'o Gea, owner of Go Nias Tour travel agent."

Hi Ali,
beads on the first picture I don't recognize. Probably modern fantasy, islamic oriented, beads.
The other beads are not older then two years, and made in East Java.

Hi Hans
thank you for your help.i am sure they are new.but for me is important to know if they are made in some where else (not Afghanistan)and i am wondering to see ethnic ones.
Ali

i've seen a lot of these roundish, collared and melon-shaped ones since before approximately 2012 in London via Afghani dealers. i agree they are certainly newly made but not so sure about Java because i saw none in Sarawak last autumn, although lots that resemble old indonesian types.

The yellow says Borneo to me...

my reply was lightheartedly meant to suggest they would be intended for Borneo because yellow is such a popular colour there!
but more seriously there are many afghanistan "antiquities" dealers in London who carry some beads similar to the collared/segmented beads and spherical dragged/trailed ones - so can we say either (west) asia islamic or south china sea?
is indonesian any better description than javanese?

It would be interesting to know the whole story.

To get to Mustang at the top of the Kali Gandaki Gorge in the 5th or 6th century they either came from India to the south or from Central Asia via the silk route and Tibet to the North? Glass beads - there should be a way to document this?

It is curious the scientific textile analysis is extensive but there is no identification regarding the glass beads in question?

If you can identify the origin of beads in the article or add something to this story please be welcome. Thanks!

Hi Bob,

Sorry, I should have replied much earlier - must have been looking in the wrong direction.

To me the beads look like the drawn glass beads that were first produced in southern India in the late first millennium BCE. Peter Francis wrote about them in his brilliant book Asia's Maritime Bead Trade. He called them Indo-Pacific beads, not a name I like very much (I preferred the old Trade Wind Beads, but Peter did so much work on them, I think he probably earned the naming rights). They were manufactured at a dozen or more sites around south India and South-East Asia, and traded all over the continent in huge quantities for more than a thousand years - low cost, dazzling little beads.

Here a poor photo (sorry!) of a strand I bought in Bandung in Central Java. They look quite similar to the drawn beads in your link, don't they?

All the best,

Will

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=get&cG=7303938363&zu=3730393836&v=2&gV=0&p=

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=get&cG=9313730303&zu=3931373030&v=2&gV=0&p=

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=get&cG=9373133353&zu=3937313335&v=2&gV=0&p=

I searched on "Indonesia bird" from the past 10 years.

Thanks for putting these links together, Chris. It's good to have them in one place.

I really like your bird bead, Linda; it's a good example and, as Shinji says, definitely authentic. I think Shinji knows these beads better than anyone.

One of the really surprising things about the beads that were made in East Java around the middle of the first millennium is the way in which a huge variety of different kinds of beads were suddenly manufactured there apparently without any prolonged introductory period of experimentation or any history of glass-making. The techniques they used are sometimes unique to that culture and always adapted in original ways.

Talking of that, I just realized that Linda had asked me in a previous thread about where I thought the monochrome blue hexagonal bicones were made (image attached again). The thread dropped off the front page without my noticing or replying - sorry! I'm sure they were manufactured along with a lot of other similar beads in different coloured glass and different shapes (cornerless cubes, for instance) in East Java. The rumour that they are Han Chinese is quite untrue: the glass composition is all wrong. In a footnote on page 243 of Asia's Maritime Bead Trade (the best bead book ever, I think), Peter Francis explains where the rumour came from and says he was misquoted by Adhyatman and Arifin in their very good book, Manik Manik.

And oh, yes, Fred, in answer to your question: nearly ten years. I'll soon be an old hand at this!

Cheers,

Will

Thank you so much Will!
Just one other thing.. are the bicone beads are found in East Java completely distinct from the Ban Chiang beads that emerged from sites in Thailand?

Hi again Linda,

Yes, despite surface similarities,I'd say they're completely separate developments. First of all, the Ban Chiang beads are much earlier - as much as 800 years. There's no evidence of contact between the two locations. No Jatim beads have been discovered in Ban Chiang and it's unlikely that any Ban Chiang beads will ever be found in East Java. Ban Chiang was an inland farming culture with considerable contact with immediately surrounding settlements. The Jatim beadmakers clearly had access to an extensive network of maritime trade.

Also, the glass from Ban Chiang is different in composition and, I would say, more uneven in quality.

The second image that I'll attach is of a long (12.5 cm) rolled pad glass tube, that was made as a glass equivalent of the jade tubes that were very popular from early times at Ban Chiang.

Best,

Will

of the Ban Chiang and East Java beads? Who has determined likely sites for the silica/soda/plant ash/calcium or whatever recipe they used?
The glass was smelted locally, not imported as ingots from elsewhere?

Lankton, James W.
2004 Using Compositional Data to Investigate the Characteristics of, and Relationships Between, Four
Mid-First Millennium CE Southeast Asia Glass Bead Making Traditions. M.Sc. dissertation.
Institute of Archaeology, University College London.
A detailed technical study of four groups of larger glass beads from eastern Java: Bird-Star, translucent
hexagonal bicone, opaque monochrome, and Jatim. Complex patterns of manufacture and trade are
indicated despite the relative lack of good dated evidence.

Hi Chris and Hans,

Sorry this is rushed; I'm running late.

By now there's a lot of published research in different languages on the composition of glass found in Southeast Asia. One of the complicating factors is that, even though many of the sample sizes are quite small, glass found at a single site may actually come from different sources, both within and from outside the region.

The most useful single study that I've read is "A Study of Mid-first Millennium CE Southeast Asian Specialized Glass Beadmaking Traditions" by James Lankton, Laure Dussubieux and Thilo Rehren, published in Interpreting Southeast Asia's Past in 2008. One of its most significant conclusions is that many of the canes used in Jatim polychrome bead production were probably manufactured close to the beadmaking site(s), not imported as had often been assumed previously. There's a substantial discussion of the black and white bird beads in that article too.

Attached are photos of some glass cullet found on the beach at Takua Pa in Thailand, and an ingot from a Sa Huynh site in southern Vietnam.

Thanks for the photos of modern bird beads, Hans. They're part of a living tradition.

Cheers,

Will

Hi Will,
In the book, Beyond Beads by Bunchar Pongpanisch are some photographs from Bird Star beads found in Klongtom. The book has beautifull pictures but it's written in Thai which unfortunately I can't read.

"A Study of Mid-first Millennium CE Southeast Asian Specialized Glass Beadmaking Traditions" I have read it some time ago. Thanks mentioned it.

But I can't find any reason why the Jatims found in Indonesia have such a thin outside layer of glass. If the canes were made on Java, why was it necessary to use such thin slices of cane? On the Asian mainland the same kind of beads were found without a core of inferior glass.
I think on Java the canes were more precious because they were imported from the Asian mainland.