"Greetings: The bead was part of a collection of a prominent Japanese art collector. They acquired their pieces from most of the big auction houses and biggest name Japanese art dealers in the world. Some of the pieces have recorded and published records some do not. This bead is not published although it may be and we just don't know, we find more information about some pieces as time goes on.

The bead appears to be pottery. We date the beads according to many factors, everything is typically in our opinion, what someone feels can be very subjective especially concerning the age of foreign objects, our Asian art specialist is a Yale Phd in Asian Art so we try to make sure we know what we are talking about, however, we try to take the best images we can and hopefully careful buyers can make sure they understand what they are buying. Its not new and its not a garage sale find like many of the pieces on eBay. All of our piece come from collections and seasoned buyers with some specialist review."