Just to give some idea of what I'm looking at in my quest to discover what Chinese cloisonne beads were actually made prior to WWII, here's a sequence of small bric-a-brac decorated with dragons.

The blue and turquoise shakers are documented to 1939. The dragon shaker with the same shape and feet presumably dates to the same era. The other dragon decorates a small smoking set (the size of the matchbox cover gives some indication of overall size).

You can see how details differ in the dragons - style of nose, horns, mane, belly scales, bulbous horn base on forehead, coloring, etc etc - although they present an overall similar appearance.

Hence my observation that the dragons on the yellow oval bead seem to be more old-school. An older craftsman who survived the 30s and 40s, still working in the 1970s? What's your guess?