I fell in love with glass around 1953 too, my Grandmother's paperweight

I remember pop beads and "Dr. Pill" necklaces and bracelets from the 50's.

They are still being sold. Here is the latest version of pop beads:

https://www.amazon.com/B-Pop-Arty-500-pcs/dp/B002YIRKKY

But I'm sure I started playing with beads and jewelry when quite young.

As an adult, I became interested first and foremost with designing necklaces and bracelets, primarily from semi-precious stone beads, when I couldn't find a necklace I liked of the right length, for a formal affair outfit. It was in the early 1990's, and I recall wandering around & around the huge International Gem & Jewelry show in San Mateo, not finding anything of interest in the finished jewelry booths. I noticed tables with piles of beads, and was attracted to strands of round garnets that were the perfect color for my ensemble. And they were cheap - $2 a strand as I recall. So I bought a bunch, and headed over to a local bead shop for findings and instructions on using wire & crimps.

For 10 years I made lots of beaded necklaces from contemporary stone and glass beads for my own use, and a few gifts to friends and relatives.

Then I met Joyce at our local bead society "member sale"in the summer of 2001. She was wearing a luscious strand of antique Yemeni coral - and it was for sale. I didn't buy it right then, since it was about 50 times more than I'd ever spent on a strand of beads. I thought about it and called her back. We met outside the Ashby BART station a week or so later, where we furtively exchanged the baggie of coral for a wad of 20's - in a secluded spot so no one would see the amount of cash being handled. I'm sure it looked like a drug deal to anyone who glanced over at us!

A few years later I purchased my second "big" strand of collectible beads, ancient agates with a few bits of coral, at a trunk show given by Ebrahim Touray.

The two strands - coral and agates, are now intermingled on two necklaces that are my special reminders of "the early days".

PS the image of the little girl is from a postcard from 1908

In one careful, simple decision that only took a few days! Makes me smile that I was there for that! :) Love the postcard image of the ponderous little girl with her beads.......

My path was through coin dealing. I started at 16, in the 1960s, selling US and foreign coins as an easier way to make money than caddying, and a way of satisfying my collecting habit on a kid's income. The more exotic the foreign coins, the less competition, the better the chance of finding unknown rarities in bulk lots, the more to learn and explore, so I gravitated to Asian and African coins, and from there went totally off the deep end - ethnographic, or "primitive" monies. Someone introduced me to an Africa Trader who had kissie pennies, hoe money, "Togo stones," Ostrich eggshell beads and other things that were sought by the far-wandering numismatists who were buying from me. I liked the looks of the Venetian and Bohemian trade beads but got involved slowly, beginning in the 90s, daunted by the sheer variety. Now I'm spending more time on the beads than the coins, enjoying them more, and have found a whole new customer base made up of both collectors and crafters - assuming there's much of a difference.

These are truly the wild and wooly early days of bead collecting, which doesn't even have a name? - no established bead nomenclature or categorization, no really comprehensive catalogs even of limited series, no presence in major auctions, prices rising steadily but still short of the spike that will happen when Africa begins to seriously dry up, or some outside event brings the hobby to wider public attention. Of all the beaders out there buying inexpensive, glittery new Asian beads, a fraction will work their way backwards to the old stuff. I've watched the various national coin markets evolve, as well as the comics / cards hobby, and see it coming here. Lots of new people dazzled by the beauty, the age, the wonder of handling objects valued by generations, asking the same old questions, needing help from the old timers. Peoples for whom bead wearing has been traditional entering the "hobby" via rising incomes and the internet. More beautiful books, more catalogs, lots of collectors putting images online. Investors. Long-time collectors will bemoan the rising costs but begin to see their holdings as a nest egg, college for the kids, a retirement fund. I made the transition from dealer to casual collector years ago - got to keep a strand or a few beads for reference, for comparison, eventually . . . heck with it, just 'cause I like their looks, or their place in the history of bead crafting. So how did I get started? Trying to make a buck - getting seduced, and now I'm hooked.

...I see beads, and I want them. One of my earlier bead purchases and creations. I wore it the other day, and just one person said, "I love that and I want it." Makes it all worthwhile. :)

My dinner companions had either not taken notice or simply refrained from comment.

We came by an older Native American lady from the Pomo tribe displaying her gorgeous miniature traditional woven baskets with seed beads ......she also was selling beaded daisy-chain bracelets and rings. Mom bought me a ring and bracelet. I still have the little bracelet...somewhere! The Pomo lady was very kind to us, and pleased that we were interested to know how she made the daisy chains. She actually gave us a demo, right there on the spot! Being a life-long creative woman, Mom remembered how! It wasn't easy to obtain supplies for us where we lived in those days, but we got some seed beads a short while later, and did some beading! We used the smallest sewing needles we could find, with dental floss.

We turned on in the turn of the 60/70's decade, to discover beads and spending many weekends playing with them (on week-ends only, because our underground activities overlapped with the straight schedules: drop-out was postponed for some months). We would make ready a nice cup of tea and homemade special cookies and to the choruses of the Rolling Stones, The Fugs, Bee Gees, The Incredible String Band... seat for the Great Groovy Bead Game: a way of making necklaces as a team.
We had purchased many cheap, new beads, along with some older, nicer ones at the flea market; so the first thing was to decide, for restraint, which boxes, bowls, bags were to be used in this particular session -- we would choose just white and clear beads, for example, or black and blue beads, or golden and red ones, or whatever for the day's trip. These were put between the two players either on a table or on the floor, each of us holding one end of the nylon thread. The game could start now, all of it a matter of agreement and politesse, remember Make Love/Not War was the global motto, and specifically "The Yellow Submarine" we deemed Good Tidings to the World.
The first procedure was to offer or to be offered the opening move: the choice of the center bead: probably a large, odd one, more rarely a tiny one -- and with your choice you were already setting a "mood" for the session. Or you could skip the central bead, asking for the necklace to be "centrally open", that is a necklace that would eventually require a pendant to be chosen, or a tassel made...
Then each player by turns would select which bead (or beads and how many of them) he wanted strung then and there, and his partner would comply -- most of the time. Many rules were devised and sur-le-champ agreed to remove blocks on the road; rules perhaps to be forgotten in future sessions, perhaps not. Try to imagine how many situations can pop up along a yard-long path, when every step may be just one millimeter.
The resulting necklaces were not only beautiful artifacts, but also acted as catalysts for the coming into being of exhilarating adventures, group therapy, funny trips, even staged dramas. The average happening lasted a couple of hours and most of our creations were chevalières -- don't ask me why-- reaching to the navel and below.
I was donning one of them at Full Moon parties -- clear cut glass beads, jet beads and some blue ones -- on my first trip to India in 1971, till it broke loose while I was swimming in Anjuna beach, Goa, and was thus turned into an unforgettable offering to Ganga Ma.

embarrassed to tell this story....

I was part of a youth group called Camp Fire Girls. Part of the program was a series of good deed type tasks called 'honors' that earned the girls wooden beads. Each bead represents an honor, ten honors earns a large bead. Each color represents a category like arts/crafts (green), outdoors (brown), science (turquoise), citizenship (red/white/blue), business (yellow), sports (red), and home/hearth (orange)... plus purple beads for membership thresholds.

Younger girls sewed their beads to a navy blue vest. Older girls made stylized Indian maiden gowns covered with beads, patches and pins. These examples are from online. The wooden beads had large holes for stringing on leather laces. The organization went through crises occasionally as former manufacturers dropped the beads. Eventually they switched to beads made of plastic that were smaller in size. I believe the organization might have finally ended the bead program. A few years ago the wooden beads were selling in lively auctions. That market crashed.

As part of Camp Fire we made crafts using seed beads. We made wooden beads and rings at camp carved from manzanita wood. We strung beads into necklaces.

There was a bead store in town near the shopping mall. I would go in there as a teen and look around. The owner told me some of the earliest bead stories I remember hearing. She would often say "if you like these you should see the really GOOD ones like these, the old ones they don't make any more." I'm still puzzled by those comments, though occasionally I'll find a primo Moretti and think this is what she must mean.

Lastly, my grandmother had a number of multi strand bead necklaces, both artisan created and imports from Japan and Germany. She gave me her old and broken jewelry, including beads. I still have some of them, shades of dark olive green glass I never seem to get around to using.

The brown Camp Fire Girls beads were in great demand. They were for outdoors, so anything we did related to hiking, camping, nature, animals and plants earned us brown beads. Sometime in the mid to late 1960s there was a brown bead shortage. A group leader from the Covina/West Covina area went out and bought a bunch of brown wooden bead necklaces from a shop so the girls would have their beads. These brown beads of a different shape appeared on some of the girl's gowns. I remember seeing them, commenting, and hearing the story.

A few years ago I was bidding on CFG beads on Ebay. This one lot contained some bumpy brown beads from the Covina group. The bidding went crazy on those and I didn't win. Guess what, I now know they are a type of ojime bead.

birdi,

Confusion is perpetuated because the size is the same: about 18mm or 3/4 inch in diameter. And with a perforation large enough for smooth passage of two cords. Sellers on ebay offer beads like these as ojime. And, sometimes, designers choose to lengthen their ojime necklaces with beads like these because their cost is low.

Adding to the confusion, 19th century Japanese farmers occasionally adapted foreign beads for functional usage. Many adaptations on inro can be seen in Chicago's Field Museum Collection. Museum protocol, for historical integrity, seldom allows alterations or repairs. When the date of museum acquisition is close to the time in which the objects were part of a Japanese gentleman's wardrobe, there is more information concerning how they were actually used. ~Whereas, at one time I would have been tempted to replace ojime adaptations by idealizing the ensemble.

The word "ojime," literally translated means: "slide closure" in Japanese. Functionally, the perforation requires a smooth edge for minimal abrasion of cord passage. As on most beads, examination of the hole is critical.

The way I learned it: The ojime bead should be made by a Japanese person for usage as a slide closure on a netsuke/inro ensemble. This definition conflicts with functional substitutes.

It makes more sense they are Catholic prayer beads than beads from Japan, considering where we live and the goods available around here in the 60's. You would have had to go to downtown Los Angeles to find Japanese ojime. Thanks for the insight. Every time I've seen them online the seller called them ojime.

Thanks for the memories, Birdi! I forgot about the CFG "bead experience". I don't remember much about that time of my life - early grammar school I think. A few years ago I sold off my vest, spare beads, beanie, and ring. Actually I was happy that someone wanted them. I have been saving these types of memories by taking good digital photos, then selling or giving things away, and reducing my "life clutter" that way.

In the same vein, I take pictures of all the beads I buy, and sell, so I can browse and enjoy the beads even if I decide to sell them.

I just had to write and say how much I enjoyed Birdi's and Rosanna's postings about the 'Camp Fire Girls' and their beads for good deeds ! The postings and photos are charming and gave me much pleasure. Beads are so entwined with emotions and memories for a lot of us. Thanks so much for sharing some of your, just lovely!