Joyce is due the honors for introducing me to the wonderful world of old beads. She wore this strand of coral to our bead society's "member's wear sale" - an event where everyone could sell any items that they could wear. I didn't buy it right away, but met her at a later date behind the Ashby BART station where we furtively exchanged a baggie of beads for a wad of bills. Was worried about attracting attention from the authorities since it looked like a drug deal! However this was Berkeley, so probably we did not look too badly out of place...

Shortly after acquiring the coral I got a strand of ancient agates from an African trader. The agate strand had a smattering of coral beads mixed in, which gave me the idea for merging the two strands. For a while they were combined into the two necklaces shown. Since then they have been remodeled a number of times and I no longer own all the agates.

In 2009 our bead society visited the Picard Museum and that got me infatuated with Venetian trade beads. But the coral and agates were my "first loves".