The beadmaker leaned on them before they were completely cooled and hardened. It was Miller Time, maybe.

Hi Patrick, could this have happened when the cane was pulled? It has to be gripped somewhere.
Often the remains of historic bead making centers are located by finding "the culls" or "wasters" of the bead industry.
Or Logan could be right, a drunken bead maker sat on the cane and cooked his goose!
Jeff

Miller Time ! No, no. Just kidding.It has to do some how w/ the heating process,(too much too little).I'am suprised they are not cracked at all.
Patrick.

Hi Patrick,
If they are drawn from a hollow gather, the tube was cut or chopped into bead lengths (Karlis Karkliins, "Beads" 1993 Vol.5) and their forms altered by heat rounding. This method of heat rounding is called "a speo". It could be that some of these overheated or were not allowed to cool sufficiently and in turn collapsed or sagged. My shot in the dark!
Thomas, always learning!

Hi Thomas,
I can confirm they are drawn beads. And probably heated too much & then collasped. Or an African attempt at re-heating them for some unknown purpose. Being called A Speo beads is a very interesting thought.
Thank's, Patrick.

The two top center beads are definately pinched. And I don't see any real "rounding" to make an a speo guess.
J

Hi Jeff,
The over heating of these beads or re heating in Africa made them into A Speo's by mistake. If that makes any sense ? You can clearly see they were heat rounded.Look at the red glass caving in around the white core.
Patrick.

According to Karklins (cited previously), there are two common methods of heat rounding or "a speo". One, the bead with very sharp and sometimes jagged edges, from being chopped off the cane is placed on a spit and inserted into a "glory hole" in an oven where it is rotated and eventually removed to cool. The other method is: the beads are placed in a "frying pan" with a mix of ash and sand, then placed into furnace where the contents is stirred until the segments are sufficiently rounded. The reason is not always to get a rounded shape but in my opinion to "knock down" the sharp edges as to prevent cutting the cordage used in stringing these beads.
Also many "green/white/yellow hearts" are and were used by the Krobos and other African cultures in the decoration of powdered glass beads. I have witnessed many "Hengme", "Bodom" and "Akoso" types with decorations consisting of "melted green-hearts". I don't have any examples handy right now but I believe Carl can help here! If not there are many examples in the "search" section.
Thomas
P.S. the "Hengme" "Bodom" illustrated in thelink has older white hearts as the original dots in the decoration and newer white hearts as the repaired decoration.

September 2020

Thomas' explanation was on the road to getting there.

The two methods he mentions are the a-speo and a-ferrata methods. A-speo beads are not pertinent here, so we can exclude any discussion of that skill-set.

The a-ferrata (or "iron pan method"), has been exploited for thousands of years, in the manufacture of small glass seedbeads. In all likelihood it was developed at South India, where Indo-Pacific beads were devised. This technique was effective for small beads, but not larger beads. For larger beads, in the Venetian industry, the a-speo methods were exploited (mainly in the 17th C.).

In modern times we are familiar with the term "hot-tumbled" for modern seedbeads. This refers to placing unfinished drawn beads (that have merely been reduced to segments) into a barrel-shaped iron container, turned onto an angle, and placed into a furnace—whereupon the container is rotated while being heated. Once the correct temperature is reached, the beads become softened and rounded.

The a-ferrata method is nothing more than the ancestor of hot-tumbling. The difference is that, formerly, the beads were placed in an open pan, over a furnace fire, and were stirred with a metal spatula. Initially, hot-tumbling was effective for making small seedbeads

Hot-tumbling was exploited at Venice, and may have been devised there. Note the diagram shown here from 1845. It appears the apparatus was refined enough that larger pieces of cane could be so-treated—devised in the 20th century at ca. 1920.

This advancement is what made the beads seen in our original question possible. And yet the process is not foolproof. It is possible that the beads might be allowed to become too hot. Or the drum was not rotated for long enough before the beads were deemed to be finished. And either of these situation might result in the collapsed beads we see in the present photo above.

The link posted here goes to a dialogue from 2006, in which methods for finishing drawn beads are discussed.

I also recommend the long article I composed for Beads (the SBR, Volume 16, 2004).

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=get&cG=4343834333&zu=3434373934&v=2&gV=0&p=

Sometimes I have broken beads that need a misshapen bead next to them for the design to work. Have you thought about what you'll do with them?