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Hello Hendrik, When pumtek beads first appeared in the US marketplace in about 1983, I did two things.. First, I discussed them with David Ebbinghouse, who had just written about Tibetan zi beads—because I knew he'd be interested in this phenomenon (similar-looking beads from another region); and I showed them to my friend Si Frazier, a highly respected mineralogist and gemologist. David was the first one to announce that the material was opalized fossil palm wood (as determined by the Smithsonian). However, even he was not certain of this because he's not a mineralogist, and only knew opal as the the colorful gem most people would think of—that pumtek beads are assuredly NOT made from. I was mislead by the appearance of the material, and for a while thought it was something like vegetable ivory. However, once I realized that pumtek beads were much too hard to be that stuff, I understood it was a mineral with an organic origin. So, fossil palm wood made good sense. Nevertheless, when I showed these beads to Si, and said they were thought to be opalized palm wood, his first reaction was that the material had a grain suggesting wood, but not necessarily palm wood. So, over the past 25 years, I have maintained that, even if the majority of pumtek beads were composed from fossil palm wood, this doesn't mean they ALL are. The material comes from the region of western Burma (not far from India)—where there is definitely a LOT of fossil palm wood available for exploitation. (I know this because Mark Kenoyer, who grew up in this region—in Nagaland—collected specimens as a young boy, and has so-assured me, and gave me a piece he collected.) But if palm trees have been fossilized and converted to opal, I suppose any trees and other plants in the area might also be so-transformed. So, even if the vast majority of pumtek beads are opalized palm wood, this doesn't mean there are no exceptions. Then, we also should not expect every specimen to reveal the same degree of grain. From some parts of the tree, the pores may have been larger and more visible than in other parts of the wood. (For instance the inner wood versus the outer wood.) Or perhaps younger trees had smaller pores/grain. Perhaps some of the wood rotted and lost it's precise structure prior to opalization. There are any number of reasons why some beads will show the classic grain of fossil/opalized palm wood, and others might not. Jamey All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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