1) Thanks for the compliments! I would like to know the second error you found in the article - as you mentioned only one (the inclusion of Mali in the Magrheb) when we talked in Tucson.

2) L.V. Redman started to file patents around 1911 for PF materials, in direct competition to the Baekeland patents (initially awarded in 1909). Redman founded or was the main chemist at the Amberoid Chemical Products Co. and the Redmanol Chemical Products Co., both in Chicago. Redman's companies produced PF resin products until he essentially lost patent challenges by Baekeland and both these companies (and their products) were taken over by the Bakelite Corp. in 1922. One of the PF products was called Redmanol.

I guess it's possible that products that were identified as Redmanol (rather than Bakelite or the many other trade names listed in my article) made their way to N. Africa. I tend to doubt it. Could the term "redman" instead refer to the red colors that yellow PFs take on if heated to various degrees? The Moroccan you were dealing with may know that real amber is seldom a dark red color and that red beads are likely to be old plastic and therefore less valuable. I don't have enough experience with darker colored or reddish amber beads to know if they are unusual in that part of the world, and exactly how their color would compare to the red shades of PF.

3) One of the weaknesses of being an "arm-chair" researcher is that I have to rely on the observations (or lack thereof) of people who collected the PF beads from the original owners. I don't have any timeframe for the carved beads - the collection on the cover was purchased "bead-by-bead" in Mauritania from women who wore them as hair ornaments, according to the collector / seller. Until I find more documentation, I am assuming all PF beads found in Africa are post- WWII.

I am currently working on translating some documents that describe natural amber beads made for the African trade, starting in the late 1800s. So it is safe to assume that amber beads were going to Africa from Europe (specifically East Prussia) and it would not be a stretch to assume that imitation amber beads (of all types - glass, early plastics, etc) were also sent to Africa in the same general time period. But I have not found any documentation of the PF imitations going to Africa before about 1950.

In fact one reference from 1951 said that PF beads were being sent to Africa because real amber beads were impossible to get any more. After East Prussia was taken over by the Russians during the war, they kept the amber production for their own purposes, and the Prussian amber workers that fled to the west eventually ran out of amber stockpiles that were hastily gathered and moved to new facilities.

This is an admittedly sketchy picture of the situation and it needs a lot more evidence before being firmed up.