They look Italian to me. But don't know if Picards had any finished matte.
Here are two side-by-side.
One nice large one with a bit of slumpage, about 35mm long, from Picards, cut from old cane. With strong backlight it's evident that the dark layers are cobalt blue.
The little one was part of a short strand bought at a flea market with no provenance - from a rendezvous kinda guy. It's about 13mm long, and the dark layers are opaque black, even with strong backlight. It's "satin" finish - meaning not a high gloss, yet not matte either. I have always believed them to be Italian, but may indeed be from the old cane stash that Luigi came upon 10+ years ago.
We have a nice piece of 1920s red cane, from Picards, 16mm x 15" long. I don't know if they have any uncut red cane any more.
...but the third layer does seem to be black. At least, I couldn't detect any light shining through it, but I haven't tried lighting under magnification.
I re-read that prior thread I linked to, and the brilliant red color of these beads, plus the sharp points, do seem to resemble the Picard cane.
Thanks, Joyce.
Remembered I had a restorer's penlight with a small bulb, and thanks to it and my trusty Optivisor, it became apparent that both "black" layers are indeed deep transparent blue.
Shining the more focused light on the outside of the bead, rather than trying to get light transmitted longitudinally, revealed the blue at the intersection with the white. The UV light pic also shows this margin.
Wow lots of info on that old thread and I was a Chatty Cathy. Since then, I did buy a whole strand of the famous Picard reds from John in Tucson about five years ago - it was a gift to my husband. Bought a strand of the blue and yellow ones from him too. I posted on Joyce's Facebook that I could be talked into sharing.
Please feel free to list some on the classifieds, or alternately as beadiste does, list on eBay and then post linkage on the classifieds....
We are not using the old "mail author" feature anymore, but a new method of contact, requiring that you login to check for private messages on your private board that you can manage yourself.
This contact method works both for the regulard discussion board as well as for the classifieds.
One can send a private reply to any post or to any add just by typing in a reply as you normally would, but click "Private Reply".
This is an easy way to make this board just a little harder to hack. It took David nearly a month to put the board back together on a whole new server, and we hope to avoid a repeat episode......
So far, so good!
