Hi Fred,

I think almost all of these bead designs originated in the Byzantine period, though many of them continued to be made under the area's new Islamic rulers, after the conquest of most of the bead-making centres in West Asia and North Africa in the 730s.

My main reason for saying this is the influence that these kinds of beads had on bead-making in Java. We know, from James Lankton's essay, "How does a Bead Mean?" in the proceedings of the International Bead and Beadmaking Conference in Istanbul, that the most beautiful of all Jatim beads, National Treasure #634, was excavated from a Silla Kingdom royal grave in Korea which can be dated to the late 5th to early 6th century CE - that is, more than 100 years before Muhammad began formulating the precepts of Islam and more that 200 years before the fall of Sidon and Alexandria to Moslem armies.

NT634, with its face and bird canes, represents the height of Javanese bead-making skills and clearly a substantial period of time before its manufacture and export must have elapsed in order to develop this strange and amazing technology at the local level. Jatim twisted beads and/or eye beads were exported from East Java to the Philippines, the Funan kingdom in present-day Vietnam and Cambodia, and to Thailand in the fifth century, and probably (at least in the case of the spherical twisted-stripe beads) even before that time. At the other end of their short history, by about 550, with a shift of regime in East Java, the bead-making industry appears to have died out.

But those Jatim beads didn't occur on their own; in their design, but not their technology, they are obviously based on West Asian models. I'm going to attach a strand of beads that I got on one of my recent trips to Java. They were a gift from a friend, a coin collector in Bandung, who said they came from a site in northern Central Java. They're very similar to two strands on page 90 of Jamey Allen's Magical Ancient Beads. Almost all of them, if we go by appearances, might have been made in West Asia. Almost all of them - possibly all - if we look at how they were made, come from workshops in Java. To put it another way, if we look at the canes in the "Islamic or Byzantine" beads we're talking about, all of them were known to glass-makers several thousand miles away in Java in the fifth century.

So if we allow for a sufficient lapse of time for them to be made, to become popular, and to find their way over such a long distance, we could easily be looking at a date for their initial manufacture in the late 300s - 250 years before the Islamic period began. But of course, they were enormously desirable beads that were produced over several hundred years, so the beads in the picture could have been made in Islamic times. I don't like the term "Islamic" for beads, anyway - it's a bit like inventing an unnecessary category called "Christian" for Venetian and Bohemian and Dutch beads! And in this case, I think Byzantine is a much better description of the beads we're talking about, because that is when and where they were first made.

Best wishes,

Will

Will,

It is a pleasure to learn about the path you've followed to reach your conclusions.
Thank you for helping to clarify these bits of information we try to piece together.

Just Fred

It is incredible! If I saw someone wearing that, I'd never be able to take my eyes of it. Really spectacular!!! Lynne

Never seen such exquisite bright colours together, and not just 1 but 3 strands!!! Super!
May I ask whether or not these beads were oiled? I've heard some people do.

Hi again, Fred,

No I was referring specifically to Andrew's beads that you reposted at the beginning of this thread. For the reasons I gave, I think that almost all of them might have been made in the later part of the fourth century CE, and so would be better described as Byzantine.

Your necklace is something entirely different, and what a wonderful necklace it is. I would love to see it, and whenever you have the time it would be great to have close-ups to talk about more specifically. Only a relatively small number of the beads have Jatim equivalents and so the dating I was suggesting simply doesn't apply to most of them. As you know of course, these beads cover a huge span of glass bead-making's evolution - seventeen hundred years or so, from well before the Roman Empire up to the thirteenth century. There are stratified eye beads that probably date from Phoenician times to trailed Islamic beads, and everything in between. It's a present history of West Asian glass beads.

Virtually each one of them has its own complex story that could be argued over. Take one of the finest of them, the focal bead on the central strand of the necklace (I'll attach an image of a similar one - not mine, or only in my dreams!). Marianne Stern dates an almost identical bead to the period 350-420 (Byzantine period), and says it was probably made in Central Europe in the River Elbe region (not Byzantine!). But other people say that beads like it have been found in first century sites and in later occurrences in Iran. We can go on forever, can't we? - which is the pleasure and the frustration of collecting.

Thanks and best wishes,

Will

I bought most of these beads from a Canadian collector/dealer between four and five years ago. He said he began collecting when he was seventeen years old and living in Jordan more than thirty years ago.

I have worn the three necklaces only twice. And it created an unexpected, popular sensation each time. The first event was a Jamey Allen lecture on Ancient Beads. And the other occasion was Diana Friedberg's WORLD ON A STRING book signing in San Francisco.

About five of the beads were oiled -but only the ones which were extremely gray. I preferred to buy brightly colored ones -especially red and yellow- for the necklaces.

Just Fred