| Original Message: Re: what's a Bead? |
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In my opinion anything that can be threaded longways or to dangle downwards can be a bead, it can even be a jewellery bead. Other items with holes can become beads by how they are used.
My home is bedecked with strands of beads some of which are individually far too large for a person to wear but they adorn furniture knobs, doors, mirrors, chair backs, windows, bedposts, and I have an assemblage of original monster size antique carved french Rosaries that make wonderful wall jewellery. You could even say that a saxophone hung around the neck is a pendant bead as even when not blown it is still a badge of office showing the occupation of the wearer, thus his status in the community. In my books: Beads! (1988) and The Bead Jewellery book (1997) (Both published in UK originally by David&Charles) I show necklaces threaded with doorkeys, kitchen jewellery made with small plastic funnels and kettle scale collectors, decorative strands of dried spices, chicken bones, antique beachcombed pipestems and porcelain doll limbs, cork fishing-net floats, antique turned wood pull-handles, etc. Soap-on-a-rope, (oh yes, and "Plumbers beads" which we havent discussed for a while!) Threadable components or beads are traditionally made in various parts of the world out of beetle legs, feathers, porcupine quills, crab claws, all sorts of small fossils, woven human hair, felt balls, and even bezoar stones, -sometimes found in the stomachs of animals and believed to be lucky and protect against poisons, and ephemeral materials such as newspaper, fresh flowerheads, sealing wax, beeswax, scented compositions, sweets/candies, straw, corncobs or fishscales. So happy hunting "Gradstu" in Ireland... (do we already know each other by any chance?) from Stefany Tomalin in London, UK (founder member, Bead Society of Great Britain) All rights reserved by Bead Collector Network and its users |
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