Tasart's black MITM bead is certainly an EXCEPTIONAL specimen! Not only, but certainly also because of the find context in Eastern Turkey (just opposite the early glass-centres of the eastern Mediterranean)together with various other glass beads of ancient origin.

Unsusual the bead not only for it's shape (round), color ("black")and the opacity of it's glass, but also because of the elaborate trail decoration Tasart's rare specimen shows.

Still, I want to point out that I VERY MUCH disagree with Beadman's remark regarding the bead's white moon and star-design. How many such beads, I wonder, have you seen and could observe, Beadman?

The (three transparent-blue)"Man-in-the-Moon" beads I had a chance to study were clearly and undoubtedly trail decorated.

Aside from manufacturing technics, I have further doubts regarding Beadman's assumption of the bead's place of origin. Holland, in my opinion, is a very unlikely production place.

SANGURU

I came across this discussion today while looking for something else. A few words about the situation in 2009. Sanguru—who was actually Jürgen Busch, was (as many will recall) essentially motivated at nearly every turn, and any opportunity, to crap on my opinions and observations, merely for the goal of challenging my position as a significant bead researcher. And this is one.

He wrote, "Still, I want to point out that I VERY MUCH disagree with Beadman's remark regarding the bead's white moon and star-design. How many such beads, I wonder, have you seen and could observe, Beadman?"

This is hysterically funny to me—due to the following. But first a few words about my interactions with Mr. Busch.

I met him in 1994, he having attended Bead Expo in Santa Fe, and then having traveled to Prescott, AZ to see The Bead Museum, where I was already working as a paid consultant. We spent some time together, and (upon his return to Germany) engaged in ongoing correspondence. (The stories I could tell about all that!)

I recall very clearly when he contacted me, and was excited to tell me he had discovered a "unique bead" (unique only to him), in North Africa. He showed me a photo. I responded, "This is a moon-&-star bead. They are fairly rare, but certainly not unknown. I first saw them in 1982 at the Rochester Museum and Science Center, and had an opportunity to examine them there."

Mr. Busch was very nonplused—because his level of knowledge was quite limited, and he could not believe that anyone knew more than he did, about most things. Since what I told him was unexpected, perhaps he thought I was lying (!). However, I can easily and quickly point to the early archaeological publication by Kidd and Kidd, (1970)—their Classification System For Glass Beads..., wherein on Color Plate Five, specimens WIIIC1 and WIIIC2 are two blue moon-&-star beads, shown from both sides. And congruent to the beads housed at the RMSC in Rochester, NY.

So—that's what happened. And for Mr. Busch to challenge me about "how many" such beads I had seen by 2009, strains credulity. He knows very well that I was familiar with these beads before he was—and decades before 2009. Unless he had had some sort of convenient memory lapse (which is certainly possible, since he is compromised on several levels—not the least of which is morally compromised).

Nevertheless, from around the time of 2009, I came to accept the idea that moon-&-star beads were most-likely made in Germany, as were certain similar beads—notably the "Jesus and Mary" beads that have yet to be published. The latter, are only known from Holland, where moon-&-star beads are also recovered. I can be forgiven for a mistaken and circumstantial error, from 2004, that was self-corrected by about 2009. I revise myself as often as needed, when new/better information becomes available. Any thorough bead researcher does this.