I'm wondering how other collectors feel about the practice of polishing ancient beads. I'm in two minds about it myself. With almost all other antiques that I can think of, from coins to bronze to furniture, it's frowned upon, and can have a substantial negative impact on the artefact's value. The same can be said for ancient stone beads (though there's a bit of leeway with ancient jade from China as long as the repolishing doesn't affect the patina).

But when jatims were introduced to the North American market in - when was it? I'm guessing - the late '80s or early '90s, it seems that a lot of them were quite heavily polished, and it appears that this enhanced their value in comparison to weathered examples. I had very little interest in beads at that time, so please correct me if I'm wrong, but I can't see evidence of the same practice on the same scale with ancient beads from west Asia. Does anyone here have any thoughts about why that was the case? Is it perhaps because the excavated condition of jatims was often so poor as a result of the volcanic soil in which many of them were buried that there wouldn't have been much of a market for them without their being polished? That may be one reason, but there must be others, surely.

Later in the 90s and early 2000s, as the new copies from Java became better, the practice seems to have diminished, perhaps because the ancient wear was now a simple way of separating the authentic from the fake. More recently, as the modern copyists found new ways to age their beads, that simple criterion in its turn no longer applies. Nowadays, I'm quite happy to find a bead with old polishing marks because, ironically, it's more likely to be authentic!

I've also noticed, that of the authentic jatims I've bought from North American sources a good 50% have been polished, whereas it's fewer than 10% with the ones acquired in Indonesia itself, or indeed with beads that I've seen in Indonesian private and public collections. Ultimately, I think I prefer beads that carry their history with them, and I don't much care for the glossy finish on some, though not all, of the beads from the Lindstrom collection. It's too much like cosmetic surgery!

But in the end it's very hard to be definitive about this, isn't it? One of my own beads that pleases me most is a huge (49 mm) pelangi that was polished (though not to a glossy sheen) when it was collected by a friend in Java in 1991 or '92 (attached here). But another is a large (39 mm) blue and white pelangi that is severely damaged and fragmentary (next attachment). I value it almost as much.

Cheers,

Will