This woman is not wearing the "Morfia/gold" bracelet, but it could be her. This kind of (rich) woman are those to wear such ornaments.

Classic outfit of a woman belonging to the Beidan "upper-class", with typical hairstyle - pre-1960.

Each tribe and area had (slight to major) variations in their hairdo - a dress-code widely in fashion before the big draughts of the 1970's, after which the "old culture" came to a rapid halt. Nowadays such dresses and hairdos are rarely seen, but they still exist in traditional families of the many remote areas of the country - mostly during festivities and marriage ceremonies!

Thank you for this enlightening thread. I do not remember previous info about the way morfias (or for that matter Islamic beads, and such) were actually worn. I do not see them on ancient paintings,or sculptures.The usual ancient Greek or Roman necklaces you see in museums are mostly light, tiny affairs, so to say understated ornaments, and chains with unconspicuous beads strung on them.(Perhaps richer graves were robbed sooner).
Once I asked our honored Beadman, and I got something like "naturally,they were TRADE beads". I was delighted, the fact dawned on my mind: "OMG, that's it, trade beads: used by... BARBARIANS".
Your info confirms this. Of course, Mauritanians, Bedouins and whoever was not belonging to their close circle (i.e. religion, language...) were deemed barbarians then.

Thanks J.

Does anybody know if they cut up perfectly good beads to make them go farther, or do they only cut up otherwise damaged beads.

Also, does anyone have pictures of the necklaces with cut up beads, it would be interesting to see.

I have a Morfia with an old chip, maybe I should cut it up and make smaller beads (grin!)

Jan

Good question!

I have seen the bracelets (not necklaces), but never the process of cutting the beads into pieces.

Sorry!

PS
Of course it appears to be logical that broken, chipped or not-so-nice beads are used for the process. But I am not sure we do the Mauritanian train-of-thought justice, when suspecting what we would do. It is certainly not out of the question Mauritanians use completely nice and intact Morfias for their bracelets.

The "holy ghost" - so to speak - is (also) in the detail, is in every single of the many broken pieces of the bead. Imagine an expensive bottle of perfume - lacking a better visualisation - even when the bottle breaks, any single drop of the fragrance is enough to smell the flavour!

PPS
The key to understand a seemingly crazy process lies in the decodation of the bead's design, lies in the true meaning of the bead. Knowing it, it makes sense to break it apart, while each of it's then many drilled splinters remains to contains the spirit of the whole. That's not even as weird as it may sound first. Think about the relic worship during the middle ages and even today!

That's nice for a change, Jan!
VERY ENCOURAGING! Thanks!