I have to disagree with my friend Will.

As I have remarked many times the designation "core-formed" creates some obstacles in Bead Study, for technical reason that involve technology/methods, and names to describe them. Most notably is the reliance on the word "core" to describe two entirely different aspects of glass beadmaking. These being ancient versus modern differences.

Here, my disagreement is with Will's statement that, "But that technique [core-forming], which was used for the making of Hellenistic alabastrons in the first millennium BCE, was never, as far as I know, used for making any beads that resembled yours."

Here's the thing. A "core" in the sense of ancient glassworking, consisted of an iron rod, upon which a friable fusion-resistent material was applied. For a vessel, this "core" was the shape of the interior of the vessel, and glass was applied onto it, eventually forming a thin smooth layer (the base glass), usually or often, followed by decorative applications that were mainly trails of different glass colors, then tooled (by "combing") into festoons, swags, zigzags, or waves. Upon completion, and when the piece was cool and stable, the worker would then remove the iron rod, and scrape-out the core material—thus having created a hollow vessel.

Core-forming was dropped as a technique once glass-blowing was devised—since blowing a hollow shape was infinitely easier. And from that foundation, the techniques of shaping and decorating, in conventional ways, was developed.

OK—so that's a core-formed vessel. Now we need to discuss core-formed BEADS.

Recalling that a core is just a rod with a removable friable material, that acts as a shaper of the vessel, and a freer from the iron rod—the exact same things hold true for beads made at that time.

Core-formed beads were made on iron rods, that had the releasing compound applied to the work-end of said rod. Nowadays, we refer to this material as "mandrel-release" or "bead-release." And nowadays most of this is torchwork. (Formerly, "lampwork"—the same thing.) BUT, whereas a vessel core has the shape of the interior of the vessel being made, a bead only required a thin layer of the releasing compound (because the idea was to make a straight channel that would be the bead's perforation). The other significant difference was that a vessel was formed on the end of the rod—and therefore only had a single orifice—whereas beads were formed further down the rod, so that the perforation would have TWO apertures. Otherwise these two application of the technology are identical. And there ARE "core-formed beads."

By the way, I explained all this to an archaeologist friend in 1982 (who was considered to be a "bead authority"). His reply to me was something like, "This is amazing—you should write a paper about all this." And I replied, "Anyone who understands ancient glassworking already knows this stuff. It's news to you because your knowledge is grounded in modern glassworking."

It is possible I ought to have taken his advice, and composed an exposition....

JDA.