| Original Message: Some help, maybe |
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Martine,
My initial reaction is that the Baule face beads on this strand are copies, from Indonesia. The color of the yellow trailing seems off, but color is hard to tell from photos and monitors vary. However both of these bead designs on this strand have the rough appearance around the holes that I see with some Indonesian beads. Also as you pointed out, the Venetian version of this bead is tabular, although usually quite a thick tabular. But not round. I have only one Venetian Baule face bead in my collection. I'm posting pictures of it so you can see the different aspects. You can see that this bead has a lot of irregular wear, including a loss of a lot of the yellow trailing. I'm sure there are other beads in better condition, so hopefully someone will post some pics for you... Also, a couple of years ago another bead pal was trying to figure out if an entire strand of Baule face beads was original Venetian or copies. Very hard to tell from the photos. Now that a second strand of "identical" Baule face beads has appeared, I am even more sure that copies are being made. I also have some very poor copies of this design which is more evidence that this design is actively being copied. The copies are so poor that no one would mistake them for antiques. All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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