As someone who has studied glass-beadmaking for twenty-nine years, I am more than familiar with the look of a drilled perforation. The lapidary-working of glass is such an unusual thing (though practiced by many "primitive" industries), that this factor calls attention to itself.

The best and easiest proof that the Chinese were drilling their rosetta beads for the first three or four years is that: 1) we could buy undrilled specimens—some of which I have shown here in the recent past; and 2) although the majority of Chinese rosetta beads were drilled longitudinally, it is not so uncommon to find strands of beads that were drilled ACROSS their girth—that therefore have a perforation that could not result from forming a hollow gather. These beads were clearly drilled AFTER the canes had been cold-divided, ground-down to spherical shapes (for the most part)—and then drilled in whatever direction was chosen. The imperforate specimens are essentially like "marbles."

Jamey