That is a great old bead Will. Thank you for the on-site eye-witness reporting, on this and the spot in Thailand. I wish that I had been there, to see the beads and the fish!

Jan Skipper
mosquitobay

I wonder if anyone can show me more examples of other beads that have interesting repairs like this. By 'interesting" I mean repairs that are not hidden, but which, on the contrary alter, enhance or complicate the aesthetics of the original object. I'm curating an exhibit of things that have been repaired in this way - ranging from a piece of fabric from ancient Egypt that has been stitched and darned over and over again, through the gold lacquer repairs on Japanese teabowls, to an old VW that is virtually wrapped in duct tape. I've got beads and jewelry from southeast Asia from my own collection, but I'd be really interested to hear about beads from other cultures.
Will

What an interesting idea, the book will practically write itself. I look forward to seeing examples of the repairs on beads, which, as you say, often add to the charm and value.

I don't have examples of beads to cite, but I read recently that our intrepid RAF boys repaired a hole in the fusilage of a Nimrod (out of Kinloss, Scotland) with a handy teapot.

Thank you, Barbara. What a crazy story! Can you point me towards a source for it, please? A teapot to repair a plane - what could be more English?
Will

Glad you liked it!

<New claims about the safety of Nimrod aircraft based at RAF Kinloss are to be raised in the House of Commons.
It has emerged that the crew of a Nimrod used a teapot to block a hatch gap in their plane after a mid-air mechanical fault.
A Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokeswoman said safety had not been compromised.>>

Incredible! But true obviously. Who else would have a teapot on a military plane? Thank you, Barbara

from Anne last summer. Repaired ivory jewelry can be great looking also.

i found it like that in the mid 1970s in Abidjan.

Here are a few different types, including repaired Ivory bracelets from africa

Here is a few repaired marble beads, and an amazonite/greenstone strand with a worn through bead repaired with a metal sleeve.

Here is a large old chevron (upper left), repaired with ivory, if I recall, and an amber necklace with a few repaired beads.

Thank you, Joyce and Jan, for those fascinating examples. Just what I was hoping for!
Those amber beads (both lots) are stunning - to me they're more visually interesting with the repairs than they would be without. The repairs were made with silver, I assume? Can you tell me, please, where they're from and what date?
And Jan, when would that ivory repair to the chevron bead have been made?
(Sorry to ask all these questions. My knowledge of beads is at best patchy. Mainly I collect ceramics and bronzes, but I've gotten into beads almost by accident - a very happy accident - because I always try to trace artefacts back to their primary sources and functions, and beads and other jewelry are often found along with pottery in early southeast Asian burials.)
Jan, those repaired bracelets made me think of this one: "jade", for a child's wrist, 5cm across. The first time it broke it was repaired with gold; the second with green glass, possibly a bead (I've seen no other example of this and the heat of the glass seems to have damaged the stone around it). It's from a site not far from the one where the jade/gold bead I posted was dug up, but a bit later.
Will

Hi Will,

It is very unlikely that the jade was heated to accept molten or hot glass for a repair; and unlikely that the glass was hot when it was placed there. It's more likely that a piece of glass (perhaps a bead) was glued into place—and that the stuff you see adjacent to the glass is the cement or gluing compound. You can verify this by testing its hardness. (Carefully and gingerly) tap that area against your front teeth. The cement will be softer than the stone or glass, and will make a "thud" sound (whereas the stone and glass will make a higher-pitched, almost ringing, hard sound). You could also judiciously use the POINT of a very sharp knife (like an X-acto) to pierce the tiniest excavation, that ought to crumble out—indicating it's a soft compound. Rotate the knife, rather than drawing it across the surface, for a minimal disfigurement.

Good luck. Jamey

Hi Jamey,

Thank you for the suggestions. Actually, I had tried both tests when I first got the bangle, but I tried them again after reading your post. But no there's no sign of any soft compound that I can find. I probed at the juncture of the stone and glass but there was no give there. And down to the right of the repair in the close-up there's a round spot or altered surface in the stone, so I tried scraping away at it with a sharp point, but after several minutes none of it scraped away or even scratched.

I have other things from the same period that have been repaired with some kind of "glue" of the time - a form of resinous proto-lacquer, I guess - but those repairs have invariably dried out, cracked and flaked away - nothing like this. My own impression is that heat has been applied in the process or repair.

Incidentally, the photo - though it's more in focus than most of my work! - is actually a bit misleading. The stone and the glass in fact are much more translucent than they appear, and the marks on the stone stand out less.

Will

Sorry Will,

I cannot say when the repairs were made on the chevron or the amber. I would say though that both are probably recent, say with 20-30 years on the cehvron, just by the look and feel of it. The amber, I could only guess.

the Pyu frog was only drilled one way. I have some more Pyu gold and animals I will post soon.

Good luck,

Jan

Ps: I love the jade repaired with gold, it shows you how important the jade must have been if they repaired if with gold. Of course maybe they were lousy with gold and just wasted it for repair work (lol)

Thank, Jan, for the aditional information. Certainly, southeast Asia at the time had more gold than most places. It was known in India as Suvannabhumi or Suvarnadvipa, "the land of gold." When the Roman Empire was running critically short of gold in the second half of the first century AD, envoys were reported to have been sent to Oc-Eo at the southeastern tip of Asia to procure more. And gold was one of the main reasons why China in the Han dynasty invaded Vietnam.
But however much gold there may have been, the repairs show, as you say, how valued the jade or jade-like articles were. I have other bangles repaired with bronze and iron, but the gold looks by far the best against the green.
Will

Hi,everyone.
Here is other related images for seal carved wood.Wish it can help.

Hello Shelly,

These are interesting items, but they are most likely not seals.

A seal is normally carved intaglio (having a recessed reverse design), so that they can serve the function of being used as a seal, to present a relief image.

The objects you show are cameo-carved—that is, carved in low relief (though heavily outlined). This is the reverse of intaglio work, but when used as a seal would produce an intaglio image. I don't think this ever happened with real seals.

What else can you tell us about these things?

Jamey

Some years ago I sent Peter Francis some "healed" Venetian feather beads. Here's a link to his post on them.
http://www.thebeadsite.com/redfea.htm

Maybe I'll find time to post a better picture here. I think I still have a few strands of them. Pete thought they were kinda ugly and wondered who (besides he and I) would find them attractive enough to buy.

I think Bully Juwara had a few strands of them earlier this year.

Thanks, Russ. Did you find out where the repairs were made? Will

Guess is Nigeria.

Here's a shot of a repaired piece at the Mali based Farafina Tigne African Bead Museum.

http://farafina-tigne.com/beads05.html

Hi Russ,
Thank you. Lovely. It's very like those pictures that Joyce posted, isn't it? I checked out the Farafina website and saw more there, also in their giftshop listed as "antiques". I thought about buying some for this exhibit I'm organising, and then I started to think: "Are these genuinely old repaired articles, or are "repaired"items also being manufactured for ignorant enthusiasts (like me!)? Perhaps it's just my suspicious nature, which usually keeps the enthusiasm at least partially in check. I know nothing at all about African beads unfortunately, just a little about southeast Asia and Tibet, so I'd welcome any help.
Will

I wonder about these issues too.

Originally, when a repaired piece—such as a broken amber bead—was offered for sale, and the repair itself was charming (in any sense of that word), people—meaning collectors and dealers—would say "the repair is so nice, it does not detract from the piece, and does not lower its value." (Not everyone would agree.)

OK, so, you pay the same price for a broken piece as you do an intact piece, based on a presumption that it was "so dear to its owner that it could not be tossed out." (We read a LOT of stuff into the things we see, and are offered. Some of it may be true....)

But now? Now we are going to be told that a repaired item is actually worth MORE than an intact item? Who made-up that rule?

Jamey

In some cultures a repair only bespeaks the history of an item, part of which can be what Jamey described as "so dear to its owner that it could not be tossed out."

Perhaps this seems inexplicable concerning beads, when presumed to be plentiful and disposable. However as we have seen with dZi beads, some items have more mystique about them than their true history of manufacture and origins would suggest.

The matter of dZi beads may be an example of how owners, when remote from the place of manufacture, may be unaware of how they were made and invest objects with symbolic, mythological or spiritual features.

For those who have hundreds or thousands of beads, it may not be apparent that certain types may be prized for specific historic or cultural reasons--or simply because one may have been a gift from a person with cultural or family power.

In Japan a mysterious lot of social and spiritual values are invested in certain ceramics and other objects associated with rather esoteric elements of culture and history. An object such as a 17th-century dish may accumulate a cachet of being a 'masterpiece' up to the time of the connoisseurship of the 1960s, until archaeological and other discoveries disclosed that what was rare in Japan was a lot more common elsewhere because it was mass-produced for export beginning in the 1660s. There are still some who hold to the old 'connoisseurship', which has become almost a social institution in itself.

I exhibit here the mouth of a 14th-century Chinese black-glazed bottle which was repaired with gold lacquer in Japan. Gold lacquer was commonly used to repair old items, without pretense of concealing damage. Even more, such a repair bespoke an owner's opinion of the item and did add to its social value as in Jamey's phrase. Where 'face' has a large social role, many persons seek to accumulate elements of reputation similar to the concept of how karma may be increased. It may be necessary to know a lot more about an object's prior social context to understand how an obvious repair may figure in a perception of value unrelated to a specific market price.

Regards,
Jadeterrace

Hi Judy,

It is worth remembering that the traditional view of zi beads, among Tibetans, has been that a broken bead is virtually worthless, and should be discarded. It's "mana"—to use a foreign word—is negated by the action of its having broken. Tibetans believe (or used to believe) that when a zi bead breaks it is because the bead has just protected the wearer from some catastrophe. Like, it sacrificed its own existence for the owner. And then it becomes worthless.

Of course, in today's world this belief will be supressed—and broken beads will be repaired and said to be "as good as new," for the sake of a profit. But that's not the original attitude about zi beads. It may be that someone will come along and claim the same thing as for repaired amber beads. 'It meant so much to its owner that it was repaired and cherished." And the new owner will pay a lot for what the previous owners considered to have no value.

It's just a broken bead.

Jamey

This was a great thread, and I LOVED all the images everyone posted. The idea of using gold to repair jade boggles the mind... Maybe because it was soft enough to work with without further damaging the jade...??

I really like repaired beads, especially when the repairs are interesting & beautifully done. I have an old pitcher that has huge metal staples through it to mend several cracks, and I LOVE it.

I especially found the thread of interest because my artwork, especially my fiber pieces, are constructed on a similar principal--that the "original" has been damaged, or cut down and rebound, then remounted on another layer of fabric, etc. Sometimes I deliberately tear holes, fray edges and then clumsily "mend" them. I'm trying to catch the essence of something that is handmade, then handed down for centuries, damaged, remade, repaired, reworked, resulting in many layers of fabric and stitching.

You've really inspired me to get started on a series! Maybe with some "repaired" polymer clay beads....

Hi Luann,
Perhaps you know the work of one of my friends, Dorothy Caldwell, who's one of the most important artists working in Canada now. Here's a link to a large exhibition of her textile works organized by the Textile Museum of Canada:
http://www.textilemuseum.ca/exhibitions_caldwell.html
The pictures don't capture the really exciting, complex working of the fabrics in her huge tapestries, but if you google her you'll find a number of galleries with better close-ups of her smaller work.
Caldwell says: "One of the great things about cloth as a material is that it disintegrates easily – it's so fragile that it is continuously being made and remade into something new. Fragments containing a previous history are reconstructed into a new object ... at least historically that's how it was. We don't do that as much today. Cloth does not have the same value that it once did. For me, the repair and reconstructing process builds a sense of history, and it all becomes a part of the cloth."
Personally, I think that in most cultures women have been in the forefront of the remaking and reinventing of domestic materials women's work - and it's because that kind on activity is disappearing in our own culture that I'm curating the exhibition that I've talked about.
In our own time, it's the work of artists - like Caldwell, like your own work and like that fabulous bead that Luigi showed us in a previous post, where he took a discarded fragment of the past, reworked it and incorporated it into something new.
In all of this, I think motivation matters. The motivation of the person who repairs a valued bead or bracelet, the motivation of the artist who tries to draw attention to her or his links to tradition - these are different from that of the person who takes a perfectly good bead, breaks it, and then repairs it again, so that it can be sold to the gullible at a higher price. For me aesthetic judgements cannot be separated from questions of function and motivation - though I'm on dangerous ground I know!
Will

Although this is not particularly Bead related, I have been taking Bronze and silver artifacts dug up by Metal Detectorists in Europe, and incorporating them in modern jewelry.

The first group is mainly Roman, two arrow heads with rubies, and a crossbow shaped fibula (Cloak or Toga pin), that had lost it's pin. each are capped or wrapped for suspension with 14k gold.

The second item is an ancient bronze belt or strap buckle trurned in to a pendant with gemstones and 14k gold.

The third item is an ancient silver plate broach that had lost part of the backing and pin, that I mounted with a champagne diamond by capturing it in gold and riveting it through the hole in the middle.

Thanks for indulging me,

Jan

These are fabulous, Jan. I'll definitely save the pictures. Will

Not only repair, but the very fact of being broken has been priced. The Victory of Samothacia (currently at the Louvre, in Paris?)is often said to be much more beautiful in today's condition than in her youth (although none of these art critics saw it then!).

In Spain, old pieces of pottery for sale to collectors are often overpriced when broken and repaired by one of those workers that were travelling from village to village to fix the broken wares with the help of "lañas"(i.e.small straps of metal,usually copper)-- a craft naturally lost long time ago.

I have heard of a master of the Tea Ceremony in Japan that broke and repaired an otherwise common cup, in order to make the present of a unique -- thus precious -- piece to his honoured guest.