Re: Mystery Beads
Re: Found them, I think -- floorkasp Post Reply Edit Forum Where am I?
Posted by: Beadman Post Reply
04/30/2020, 08:10:01

"I understand you said they are not recent production."

No. What I said was that the present owner believes these are beads from some thirty years ago.

Over my thirty-plus years of assisting people I have been presented with numerous instances where someone believed that certain beads were "very old"—or even said they had owned them for that long. But, often enough one of two things probably happened. 1) Some later beads got tossed-in with some earlier beads. Or, 2) The person has confused one bead or group with another bead or group.

The third option is that the whole story is a crock of poop. I've been through this often enough too. Memorably, with someone whom I believe is a scam-seller—talking about "these beads were in-storage since the 1950s," about beads made in the 1980s or later. In fact, I was contacted by the same person, hawking this story, twice—ten years apart (!). I reminded him/her that we had already been through all this.

When someone asks for my help, I try to help him/her. I do not usually challenge the owner to prove the beads were from whatever time they were said to have been collected. That would be impolite. However, IF I RECOGNIZE the beads I would say so. So this entire proposition and response has been based on the owner's belief that the beads are old. My FIRST reply to her was to compare them to recent Chinese beads. So she knows this.

The beads in-question, to me, resemble Japanese beads. But, as I have remarked, I don't know of any Japanese glass beads that have trailed decorations resembling what I can plainly see on these beads. Since modern Japanese beads derive from Czech production practices, I always expect some congruency may occur between Japanese and Czech beads. And we know the Czechs are able trail-decorators. Yet the beads in-question do not seem Czech to me.

This is why, when seeking an answer, one asks whether anyone RECOGNIZES the beads. Even if this seems unlikely to happen. I can compare "A" to "B" for days, weeks or years. But a comparison is not a recognition.



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