These are found on Iroquois sites , 1610-1625,also some Spanish 1585 1630 .I think some are Venetian and some are Dutch.By this period there were enough Venetians running the glass houses in Holland that the cross over was substantial.
Somewhere in the back of my mind was the memory that the bigger versions of these beads could also be found in Native American 17th century sites - but I couldn't remember if it was a Fenstermaker booklet, or an Ornament article where I'd read about them. And these smaller beads were a mystery to me until I spotted them in Dubin.
So thank you for sharing your expertise.
a ferazzo is rounded in a pan as opposed to on a spit.
The a ferrazza (or a ferraccia) method rounded the ends of beads by placing them in a copper pan held over a heat source............
and more:
Posted by: Beadman Post Reply
06/16/2008, 14:44:35
Hi Thomas,
The a speo method is different and separate from hot-tumbling. A speo beads are finished one-at-a-time (or, at best, a few at a time). Tumbled beads are finished en masse—that is thousands (or millions) at a time. These are two different methods to get a similar-looking result. The primary difference is that a speo beads tend to be larger (too large to tumble using the equipment of the time); whereas tumbled beads are generally small (too small and numerous to treat one-at-a-time).
To be really precise, what we now call "hot-tumbling" is only a late variation for a previous technique that the Venetians called "a ferrazza" ("in a pan"). Before a huge barrel-like apparatus was developed for tumbling, that was mechanically turned on an axis (to TUMBLE the beads in a furnace), the device was a pan (that looked something like a big frying pan), in which the beads were stirred. So in earlier times (before the 20th C.), NO beads were "tumbled" (exactly); they were stirred.
In any event, it is a mistake to say 'a speo—sometimes called tumbling.' It is stirred beads that have mistakenly been called tumbled beads. Stirred/tumbled beads should not be confused with a speo beads—because they are very different processes.
All of this is discussed in detail in the article I produced for Beads about a year ago.
Jamey
THE BEADS OF ST. CATHERINES ISLAND
ANTHROPOLOGICAL PAPERS OF
THE AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY
Number 89, 312 pages, 35 figures, 12 plates, 7 tables
Issued April 1, 2009
Copyright © American Museum of Natural History 2009
ISBN 0065-9452
Here is an exerpt: The products of the Margariteri and of the
Paternostri guilds differ in several important
respects, the first being the gross size of the
beads. The Margariteri produced chiefly seed
beads, and while there is some overlap in sizes,
the Paternostri generally made larger beads. The
chief difference between the two guilds was
how the beads were finished. The Margariteri
finished their beads “a ferrazza” (on an iron pan)
by stirring them over heat, while the Paternostri
finished beads “a speo” (by the spit) (Gasparetto,
1958: 186). Francis was the first to report this in
English (Sprague, 1985: 91; Francis, 1979c: 8),
but it was left to Karklins (1993) to uncover
the details.
In the a speo method, segments cut from the
drawn tube are mounted on a unique tool. This
device has a round metal base held by a wooden
handle. Six or so tines arranged evenly around
the edge of the base rise perpendicularly from the
base in the direction opposite the handle. Several
glass tube segments are placed on each tine. The
metal part of the tool and the segments are held
in the fire and rotated by hand. The segments
began to soften and assume a round bead shape.
