There are some very nice beads in your second post; thanks for showing them. Could you please describe where and how they were found? It would be very useful.

However, I don't think any of the beads that you call 'type 2" look as though they were made by carving the pattern in the glass. (You say that the one I showed was made by that method, but I can assure you it definitely wasn't.) On the contrary, the nature of the free-flowing outlines of the bird and sun designs and the substantial variations between the patterns on different beads makes it much more probable that they are the result of a liquid application of glass (or enamel, as Jamey Allen suggests) rather than a carving technique.

When the white glass or enamel falls out, this is not evidence of the design having been carved and inlaid. It is simply a result of the trailed glass or painted enamel not having fused sufficiently into the body of the bead.

If you think about it for a moment it doesn't make any sense that a carving and a trailing technique would exist side by side in this same culture. The trailing or enamelling technique is much more efficient, and would have developed naturally in a culture with long glass-beadmaking experience. There is no evidence of lapidary inlay techniques in carved stone beads (such as existed in the Samon Valley in Burma, for instance) having developed in East Java prior to this time.

The picture is of a so-called Balinese duck, which I think is being represented in these bird designs.

Cheers,

Will