I visted Addis Ababa twice, late 90s and early 00s, and saw a few bandera beads the first time I went. They were being offered for sale at, if I remember correctly, 10 dollars each which I thought was too expensive especially as there were lots lamp worked beads and a few islamics available. I think the dealers mentioned on that occasion that they had customers from Japan who were happy to pay their asking price.

The second time I went I had decided to buy some banderas but had real trouble finding any. I eventually found some with a dealer called "Shifta" who had a shop fairly close to the centre. "Shifta" means robber, in Amharic I guess! He had about 5 and I chose only two of them as the price had gone up to 15 dollars each.

While I was in Addis on this occasion I met an Englih guy based in Paris and an Italian guy based in Venice who were also buying. They were on business while I was in the fortunate position to be there because it's close to Saudi Arabia where I worked and you could find cool beads and silver. It's also close enough to Yemen to combine visiting both.

I asked Andrea about bandera beads and he told me that he never bought them as he would be unable to sell them in Europe for the price they were being sold for in Ethiopia. If my memory serves me he confirmed that the market for them was in Japan and said that they were older than your ordinary millefiori. Interestingly there weren't that many ordinary millefiori and there were no tubular millefiori. As I mentioned before the great majority of the Venetian beads were a limited range of lamp work beads, lots of "skunk", but by sifting through you could find some unusual colour variations or different patterns. Lots of Czech beads as well, though again lots of quantity but limited variety.

I thought the fact that they were called "bandera" rather than bandiera was significant as Italian is still quite widely spoken in Addis. Clearly they are "flag" beads but in Spanish or Portuguese! Or maybe it's just a common mispronunciation of "bandiera".

Anyway, unlikely as the whole story may seem I returned home with, among others, two bandera beads.

Unfortunately I was so intrigued by, or perhaps, fell in love with these round millefori that when I had the opportunity of buying either a load of kiffas or a load of round millefiori at the same price, I went with the millefioris. When I was buying them I knew that they weren't bandera beads (they were from West Africa) mainly because they were mostly slightly smaller, didn't have base glass showing between the murrine and on closer examination nearly all had cadmium selenium reds and yellows (imho and limited experience).

Anyway I still like these beads (just as well) and I still have my two bandera beads which I would love to post pics of but unfortunately I put them together with the round millis! So I can no longer be 100% sure that any bead in my collection that I identify as a bandera bead is really from East rather than West Africa.

However, I do feel fairly confident that I can distinguish between the two kinds. I remember seeing a bead on David ----'s site African Trade Beads that I would identify as a bandera bead and from his description he also felt that it was different enough from normal round milli's to single it out. From memory, he noted that the murrine were not completely marvered into the bead base and that base glass was visible round the murrine. Oh, it was also cheaper than the beads I bought in Addis!

You may have noticed that I go in for long and rambling when it comes to posts. Hope that doesn't overly irritate.
Brian