We had a great time today in Carmel, CA at John & Ruth Picard's museum. The weather was wonderful, and we started our visit (after a 2 1/2 hr drive) with lunch out on the patio of a local restaurant. In attendance were Joyce, David, Junona, Paula, Fred, Jaret, Gary (Jaret's husband) and myself. John and Ruth joined us as we were finishing up our desserts, then we strolled the short distance to the museum.

The displays of African trade beads are incredible, and as mentioned before, can hardly be done justice with a few photos. Nevertheless, I took a bunch of pix to share with the forum. I'm posting some tonight and will continue tomorrow.

The first group of beads I took pictures of were Bodom beads, which are displayed along with some Venetian "imitation" beads - beads that appear to have been made to copy the designs on Bodoms. However, no one is certain that it wasn't the other way around.