Sorry. I thought I had reformatted this image last night....

JDA

Here's a photo of the donkey bead, hanging from the rear-view mirror of the cab.

There is a long Middle Eastern tradition of using blue beads to ward off the evil eye. What are called "donkey beads" from Iran (modern versions of old faience beads), clearly were used to protect valued draft animals. Today, a car has a similar value to a person, and also needs protection. Thus this use of the bead inside a car. (Note also the Coco Chanel rhinestone piece!)

Jamey

A real fossill bead

Hello Red M. and Jamey
Yours is a beautiful piece of fossil coral, the type unlike red coral but which is composed of the small floral-patterned elements that can be found more like a very perforated decorated sponge structure. The solid fossilised sponge has formed when all the apertures are filled with what becomes stone.
Unless I'm wrong, the "Sange Mariam" stone is a conglomerate of deposits of small carcasses or life forms that have fallen together and become petrified in a random pattern, in this case, like the blue lias strata in the cliffs of the south west coast of Britain which are filled with millions of tiny organisms and often ammonites.
So technically its fossil stone, while yours is a fossil itself.

The "Faience" donkey bead is made in Qom in Iran.

Stefany

splendid bead indeed. I'm very interested in beads made using fossils. Did you got this one in China?
Greetings
Giorgio

Hi Napoleone,

Here is a bead that was made from a fossilized sea urchin (echiniod). They are often used as spindle whorls.

Cheers,
Evelyn

Hi Evelyn, many thanks fo the picture: do you know where is this sea urchins from and where and when it has been used as a spindle whorls?

Ciao,

Giorgio

Hi Giorgio,

This particular sea urchin was found in the Mali desert/West Africa. It measures 14 x 29 mm and weighs 20 grams. It has a tapered (man-made) perforation measuring 7 mm at the flat end and 4 mm at its convex/domed obverse. As to your question when these were used as spindle whorls - there is no specific time frame. Often spinners used objects that were easily obtainable and which offered themselves to be used as a spindle whorl, due to their respective weights and shapes. These objects could be seeds, beads, shells, echionids etc. It is known that spinners in Scotland and in Ireland (and perhaps elsewhere as well) did use a small potato, when nothing else was at hand.

Evelyn

It belongs to one of my friends in Beijing who has a antique shop in LiuLichang (maybe some of you guys know). Obviously it's old and pretty old ,I gave him $200 for this one
but he would not sold it to me. I never see any other beads of this kind in china I thought this one is alien. may from middle east?

Have you guys any idea on it?

R.M.

Hi,

Your bead looks as if made of fossilized coral - you may like to compare with the image below. The image shows a piece of fossilized coral (not a bead) from Madagascar.

Cheers,
Evelyn

Oh Evelyn, you beat me to the punch! :^)

I used to have a huge collection of these fossil corals. It's called Petoskey Stone (obviously not its scientific name) and is the state stone of Michigan (my home state.)

I think my mother used to clean out my closet periodically & throw away my stone collection. And when we moved from Michigan to the west coast, my husband refused to ship my rock collection (we were so poor, we couldn't afford to pay for the extra weight) and I donated it to a high school teacher who was an amateur rock hound and geology nut.

I miss my Petoskey stones!! :^(
Luann

Thank you for your research on Sange Mariam. I have some of them, a strand made at least 20 years ago and some newer. Technically the rock is called a "coquina", that is, a sedimentary rock with a matrix (a fine mud, dark brown in colour in this case) containing a high percentage of more or less broken shell, mostly from molluscs. In this case the great majority of visible fragments belongs to bivalves. The "teeth" you can see also in your specimens can be due to external ornamentation (lamellae,ribs etc) of the shell seen in cross section, or to the teeth of the hinge line, the area of the shell in which the two valves articulate. Radulae (a sort of tongue with serial teeth) are usually too small to be easily seen without a strong lens or a microscope.
Greetings,
Giorgio

Hello Giorgio,

I have actually viewed and photographed this stone under a microscope. Seen here are three views of a sange Maryam bead (or beads--I had these shot a while ago).

I have been inclined to suspect that the mollusk typically found in this material is a univalve (a snail). Note the left part of the image where a spiral can be seen, that is easier to explain as part of a snail shell than a clam (or the like--a bivalve). Nevertheless, Peter Francis asseted that the "shells" were from a different phylum all together....

Regarding the size of the radulae ot teeth, they are admittedly small (whatever they are), but since we're dealing with fossil creatures that died millions of years ago, a comparison to the radula of a modern snail might not provide an apt comparison. In any event, I'm not married to the idea, but I would enjoy seeing/reading anything that scientifically identifies this material and its inclusions. I hit upon the idea of radulae because, apart from the external shell, these are the only hard body parts a snail is likely to have. A clam, of course, does not use a radula for tearing food. You may be totally correct in your alternate identification of the smaller inclusions, or in general.

Cheers, Jamey

so many news english words

Hi jamey,

I have a slab 23 cm x 13 cm of the same rock as the beads. This photo is taken vertically on the bedding plane or original depositional plane of the shells. Some single, not too crushed valves of clam are clearly recognizable. On this slab I recognized just three snails, I'll try to send another picture. However, 99% of the fossils belong to bivalves; maybe it's clear to me because I'm ain invertebrate palaeontologist, and I'm accustomed to "read" this kind of rocks just like an arab is able to read arab writing, which are quite unfamiliar to me.

Greetings, Giorio

I have some problems with the macro of my coolpix. The photo is not so clear but a spiralized section of a gastropod (about 9mm) indicated by the penscil is probably recognizable. As far as I know, radulae are studied by systematic specialists at the scanning microscope.

Saluti
Giorgio

Thanks for pointing out the tiny shell, I never would have caught that.
BEAUTIFUL stone.

Luann

These are most likely from China and usually labeled as Script or Grassy Jasper. I guess that is all wrong, uh?

roughly 12mm x 30mm and beautiful

Hi Carl,

It's not unusual for plants, animals, and other things to have a variety of popular names. Sometimes they are mistakes, sometimes reasonable, sometimes regional..., not necessarily wrong. I've heard the "script" name, but not "grassy." I've also read another name (that I can't dredge out of my memory at the moment). In both instances, the names were for new Chinese beads made of this stone.

The beads you show are very attractive.

Cheers, Jamey