I need to correct my faulty memory and the mistake I made in this post.

The story goes that two brothers who are/were "Tibetan" operated a factory (and it may still exist, for all I know), where they made plastic imitations of zi beads.

However, they were not located in "Lhasa,Tibet." They were in (or near) Kathmandu, Nepal.

The manufacture of these beads, as to technique, is well documented. I have photographs of the sequence of operations in my Archive. However, I determined this before I ever saw the specimens, by taking apart some of these beads in 1984. They were the subject of my lecture for the International Bead Conference in Long Beach, aboard the Queen Mary ocean liner, in 1985.

So, for anyone who has serious doubts that "plastic zi were made in Tibet," you would be correct. I named the wrong city and country in the previous post to which this message is related, above (!).

I have a strong apiration to correct any mistakes or errors I commit. And I should have posted this reply a long time ago. Nevertheless, the bead shown by Russ, without a doubt, is a typical Nepalese plastic zi.

JDA.