Hi Susan,

Pseudo-Tibetan items abound in the market. As you mention, many are made in Nepal. Many beads, such as jade and also new fake dzi, are made in mainland China and sold with reference to "Tibetan" because it sounds more exotic than "Brand New Chinese (or Made in Nepal) to emulate Tibetan style". Similarly, pseudo-Naga artifacts are very available - repro items also made in Nepal in a style to emulate tribal Naga. Be careful, and learn about what interests you. Go into a purchase at the average show knowing that you are probably buying new repro if the price is affordable. Buy it if you like it.

Here is a link to the L.A. Asian and Tribal show this weekend. It is a vetted show - with no new repro items. This promoter has the highest standards and provides a showcase for tribal art like no other.

Most of the beads used by Tibetans as prayer beads - both today and in the past - have come from outside Tibet(historicaly as trade beads). So a Tibetan bead could have that loose definition as a bead that has been owned and used by a Tibetan person - but one that is more than likely manufactured outside Tibet.
Of course there is that big exception - the bodhi bead mala - which are one of the most common prayer beads. These are made of bodhi seeds - and are easy to manufacture, even in Tibet (that is if you have holy bodhi tree knocking around in the neighborhood).
So here are some pics I've taken of the real thing - and my wife trying not to buy them!!!!!
This is rural Tibet - a long way from Lhasa.

Hello friends living in Tibet,

It is always good to hear from someone who is on the spot, so to speak. I have a picture of three supposed Tibetan prayer malas, or strings perhaps, that I bought some years ago. The top string was said to be made of Yak bone, but is made with nicer than normal materials. The bottom two strings were said to be made of Human bone. The typical story of being made of a holy person's bones.

They are obviously made of different bone types than the yak, and also have much better than average turquoise, carnelian, shell and silver accessories. In other words it is easy to tell that they are nicely made pieces and more valuable than the normal stuff. I showed them to my doctor friend who teaches medicine at a local university here and he said that they could be human bone, but he could not say for certain without testing.

I guess my question would be with your experience in Tibet, do these appear to be authentic pieces, or just more tourist material? If Bob is listening out there his opinion would be most welcome also.

Thank you for contributing your valuable insights to this forum, it is certainly appreciated.

Jan Skipper
mosquitobay

Those are gorgeous!

Thanks for sharing!

Susan

All those strands look very Nepalese/Indian - the top strand with the painted bone are common in many souvenir shops in the west of China/Tibet - the other bone beads look a little more special and out of the ordinary (you certainly dont see them for sale around where we live - Chengdu - 2/3 days drive from the Tibetan border proper and a days drive from Sichuan Tibet). They often "age" bone beads by smoking/baking (I suspect in dung - which gives them a rather ripe smell) - so if your beads have a tinged look and the whiff of the bonfire - then they may not be too old.
The good thing about those malas is the turquoise - a few of those stones look nice.
As for being the genuine article - well most of the malas for sale in the antique shops have been made up from differnt bead sources - the good ones having a few old beads mixed with some new - but to find malas of beads where the beads have actually been used in Tibet can be a fools game (even in places like Lhasa),since this bead market has been drowned out by the Nepalese fake antique jewelry trade.
As for human bone - well there are lots of those skull bowls and arm/leg bone pipes to be found in a lot of antique shops - so there could well be human bone beads - but I haven't run across them.
My pics are of typical prayer beads type found in situ (one mala on a monk - the other from an antique shop) - usually the real thing seems not quite as spectacular as the offerings from Nepal - but they have a lot of character!!!

please! Who are you? Allow me to extend to you a big warm welcome to the forum!! We are very interested in learning about beads in different contexts, different places, different Ethnics. Thank you for these wonderful pictures!

Thank you so much, Joyce!

Very helpful!

While my new beads are just that, new, they are very exotic looking and I hope to incorporate them into some nice pieces.

And I also hope that the families that make them are getting some kind of living out of making them for sale, and it helps them upgrade their standard of living.

So many factors to consider.

My background is not in beads, it is in the "fine jewelry / gem" market and it's ancient past.

I spend 3 hours on Sunday watching a special on the diamond industry which aired on the Discovery chanel and, wow, that floored me.

I had known for years about some of the ugliness involved, but I certainly learned a lot more.

Anyway, thanks so much for the info, and you are right, buy what you like but buyer beware.

Here are some black diamonds, and champagne colored diamond necklaces that I made last year with high karat gold, also a jelly opal with gold necklace.

The second picture contains morganite, lovely plum rubies, light blue sapphires, and jet also with high karat gold.

I love working with all manner of beads, A to Z.

Jan

Hi Joyce,

This is largely good advice with which I agree. However, I suspect that many new beads sold out of Nepal (and said to be "Tibetan") are actually made in India. In the future, more and more beads will be made in China, and sold in Nepal and throughout the Himalayas as "Tibetan" beads. Though presently many already are that. Particularly "zi" and other agate beads—as we all know.

Jamey

It would be interesting to know how many of old "Tibetan Beads" were made in Tibet proper...

Hello Nishedha,

It is always been my contention that most of Tibet's beads—agates (particularly), coral, amber, and turquoise were imported (from India, the Mediterranean, China, Northern Europe, and Persia). I have said this many times. So the answer may be "very few."

Nevertheless, it's clear that the Newari metal smiths of Nepal have made many beads and artifacts for Tibetans and Greater-Himalayans; and I do not doubt that Tibetans may have made beads for malas from materials like wood and seeds. I also expect they made beads such as the mosaic-coral beads that are based on recycling broken specimens.

The problem with current beads is not just that they are not "made in Tibet." The problem is that they are passed-off as "old" or even "ancient," with the inference that they were owned and used by Tibetans—when many current beads were made in China, may have no Tibetan tradition to speak of, and were made for export and to be misrepresented as "Tibetan" (based on some diabolical idea that China "owns" Tibet). It is the misrepresentation that I resent most. Followed by their mistaken identity.

Jamey

See:
ARTS OF ASIA, July-August, 2004. (Volume 34, Number 4)
An 18 page outstanding paper, titled "Prayer Beads in Asian Buddhist Cultures". Text by Anne Breckenridge Dorsey and photographs by Scott McCue.

To answer the question ¨C about who we are ¨C then I can explain that we¡¯re an English Chinese couple, who have a great passion for visiting the Tibetan areas that lie so close to our Chinese home-city of Chengdu.
To make ends meet we dabble in a great number of things ¨C but one of our projects, which we thought would be rather straightforward because of location, was to deal in Tibetan jewelry. However this task proved more difficult in practice than theory ¨C since its so difficult to find authentic stuff (its seems 99% of stuff on sale ¨C that has the Tibetan label¨C has more to do with Nepal(India)/China ¨C and so much of the so-called antique ¨C is very modern) ¨C and that which is genuine often sits with a price that¡¯s horribly inflated by the tourist industry.
With this in mind we¡¯ve traveled a lot through Tibet trying to find genuine Tibetan products ¨C traditional products that were in production today. In the jewelry line ¨C there are silver smiths working in Tibet ¨Chowever these are not Tibetan but minority folk from Yunnan province who make ¡°silver¡± products in Tibetan style (the silver percentages are said to be pretty low). I suspect these folk have been plying their skills in Tibet for centuries. Another industrious group with regard to jewelry are the Ethnic Chinese muslims who have traditionally traded in Tibet ¨C these guys have shops in nearly every town/village and many deal in beads and must have had a major hand in the import of beads. Tibetans themselves have been mainly involved in a nomadic trading life ¨C trading their livestock for various commodities and not so involved in complicated specialized production processes. Therefore our quest for modern made Tibetan made jewelry ¨C so far has drawn a blank ¨C at least with regard to finding anything that combines traditional character and crafted quality.

By the way ¨C many craft traditions suffered in those terrible years in Tibet when ¡°outside¡± pressure threatened the old ways of life. But today things are a lot better ¨C and there seems to be signs of a renaissance in certain crafts (almost certainly fuelled by the new tourist industry ¨C and a huge interest shown by the Chinese for anything Tibetan) ¨C so we still look forward to finding some form of modern traditional Tibetan jewelry production (we¡¯ve already been given the word that real Tibetan silver smiths are working in at least one locality ¨C but what we also hope to find is bone carving).

Nowadays our quest for real Tibetan products has taken a new turn ¨C fabrics. Only last weekend we were in Tagong/Yala mountain (the village/mountain in the picture - as you can see during a cold weekend) to look at a Yak wool project that is being sponsored by the US aid group Winrock. What the Tibetans lack in this kind of project are the marketing skills to sell their product (fabrics ¨C bags ¨C carpets ¨C clothing) ¨C skills that give the local community a sustainable income (a far better way of making money than selling off the family jewelry). So if anybody is interested in giving practical support to this project ¨C such as providing contacts with folk who have craft shops in west ¨C or dress-makers/tailors who might like to include woven yak wool fabric in their creations ¨C then please contact me and I can send you more info and pictures of what¡¯s going on in this neck of the woods.

Here are a couple more pics of beads being worn in today's Tibet.
Coral is very popular - and in the past this product had extreme value - to such an extent that carnelian was worn as a coral look-a-like. Today coral is still a big hit(the lucky color red) - with beads being manufactured and dyed specialy for the Tibetan trade by the Chinese.
Turquoise, another popular bead, also comes from China - nearly all those beads on the girls head are new beads. This turquoise type is common in all the local bead stores - but you dont see so much of it offered to tourists (but you sometimes see it in antique shops being sold as old stone). Souvenir turquoise usually consists of far more regular type stones in rather exotic stringing arrangements - you don't see many of the locals wearing that stuff!!!!

PS - that turquoise girl was so pretty - that I had fantasies of taking up a nomadic life on the grasslands. However a heavy right-hook from my wife brought me back to reality once again :)

Thank you very much!

Hello Vikuk,

I believe that the use and popularity of coral beads supplanted an earlier use of carnelian beads—namely the pema raka beads that still circulate (and have been replicated in recent years by the Chinese). Consequently, I would not see carnelian as a substitute for coral, but rather it was the reverse of this. It is certainly also possible that one material might be more popular or preferred in one region or group of people over the other material. Do we know which Tibetans continue to wear the greater numbers of pema raka beads?

The wearing of both carnelian and coral provide the opportunity to have the color red in ornaments—and thus their popularity. Everywhere, red is a significant color in symbolism, and a popular color for its beauty.

Jamey

Hi Jamey,
You're most likely correct - but there are three points to note.
- Tibetans seem to hold anything that originates from the sea as precious - you find stalls selling shells/shell beads - and pearls are very popular.
- In all of our travels in Tibet we've never seen carnelian worn in the form of pemma raka. In fact I wear pemma raka on a daily basis and have been asked on many occasions by ordinary Tibetans, in Tibetan areas, who were not involved in the bead/antique business what it was.Nowadays pemma raka seems only to be found in the antique markets. By the way, Pemma raka carnelian looks very differnt to most of the modern "carnelian" type beads on offer today.
- red is very symbolic in China - motorists often tie red strips of cloth onto the wing mirrors of their cars to ward off accidents - and certainly not as something to enhance the cars appearance. Tibetans have the same practice but usually use a white or orange holy scarf - where once again the color choice is not just made on purely aesthetic grounds. Even the number of beads is often decided through tradition/ritual - whether is be 108/44 etc etc (my wife knows all those holy numbers - my addled brain can only remember 108). Even in the big jewelry wholesale markets in Chengdu - many beads sellers still sell beads in strands with these numbers - even if the beads are modern mass produced crapolla - and never intended for use as prayer beads.
To find out how important ritual is in Tibet (at least outside Lhasa) - try walking around a temple in the wrong direction - jeez those looks can kill - and in the end somebody may come to try and stop you.
The pic is of some of our old pemma raka - this type of carnelian has been traded from China and is know as nan hong - southern red. The other pic is of some old carnelian rounds that have been used in Tibet.

By the way - we've hardly travelled through all of Tibet - its a pretty big place - so there hopefully are places where they still wear Pemma raka. But everywhere we've been to coral/or coral look-a-like stuff is on sale.

I have shown these before, but this is a good time to remind people or show them again for newcomers.

The upper (or left) image shows five beads in my collection. The upper left bead is an authentic old pema raka bead from Tibet that I bought in the 1980s. Early pema raka beads are characterized by deriving from a particular quality of agate that is fairly opaque, and has a color on the side of being orange-brown. Some beads display quartz fortification zones—these being areas that have white and/or crystalline banding, usually in a closed pattern (a "fortification"). These areas might be small and unobtrusive, or they may be large and compose a significant part of the bead. The perforations of old pema raka beads tend to be reasonably large, as suits their reported use as "hair beads." They generally look like old beads, being gnarly, and distressed.

I believe that the material is essentially Chinese, because I have documented carvings from old China of this same material, some of which date from the Ming Dynasty. I'd like to think the pema raka beads are around that old. In addition to the "nodule" shape of these beads, this same material was cut into melon-form beads, as wells as thick disks, some of which appear in Himalayan prayer beads.

To the left of the above specimen is a GLASS imitation that I also bought (in San Francisco) in the 1980s. I don't know who may have made it, but I'd guess China is a possibility. It is the only glass pema raka bead I have ever seen. Apart from lacking any markings that imitate the convolutions of an agate stone, it is a very reasonable copy of a pema raka, in terms of size, shape, and color.

The three lower beads are new copies of peme raka beads that I bought in the late 1980s. These are from China, and appear to have been made from the same material—excepting only that they tend to be more translucent than older beads. (This also implies to me a Chinese origin for the source of the agate.) For some unknown reason, the reproduction pema raka beads have one large aperture on one end of the bead, and a smaller aperture on the other end. Most of the perforation channel is thinner, except for that larger one that penetrates only about 1/2 an inch into the bead. These were clearly not made to be "hair beads." If the Chinese have continued to make reproductions, there is every possibility these are more authentic-looking now. They may even be artificially distressed to look old....

The second photo is a necklace of old pema raka beads that I made for a client a few years ago. Note the thick disk beads included. The clasp bead is not a pema raka, but rather a jasper.

Jamey

Beadman is right once again - there are repro pemma raka beads floating around - I should know I have some here.
That first pic is of the repro pemma raka type - but there is one genuine old bead in there - try and spot it :)

The second pic - a scan - shows two antique and two repro - its isn't too hard to see which is which!!!

Problem is though - if you're not often in contact with this stuff, and you're not able to make a comparisson,then genuine ID can be difficult - and that repro stuff is pretty nice in its own right. Much better quality than some of the other Tibetan repro - like false antique turquoise!!!

So another clue to whether its real or old depends on a pair of good eyes. With them, if you look down the thread hole of the old stuff you may well see a ridge - that indicates the thread holes where drilled from seperate ends and meet around the middle. The thread holes of the repro are always "smooth bore" - drilled in one go.

July 2019

In 2017 it was determined that the material used for making pema raka (carnelian) beads can be sourced to Yunnan. (Communication from Mark Kenoyer.) So I have put-to-rest my suggestion that the origin of this discrete carnelian may have been Chinese Turkestan (Xinjiang).

JDA.

Hi there Mosquitobay,
we were in the "antique" market at Chengdu today - so I kept an eye open for that bone type you suspected could be human. There is a lot of it (or at least stuff that's almost identical) - and its animal - and new - and its sold with all the other Nepalese stuff.
One of our friends apparently has human beads - a Tibetan they call "the fatman" (sounds like a spy novel - ehhh). But the fatman wasn't at home (hope he aint off in a search for more human bead sources!!!!)
That other pic is a place - beleive it or not - which is Chengdu's fake antique wholesale market!!!! It lies about 500M from the "real" antique market - but at least 90% of the antiques claimed to be real, dug up from tombs, found on the silk road etc etc - come from the fakey market!!!! There was even a piece on the local TV about it and how people are conned into thinking fakes are real.
But luckily the govermnent have acted - they have forced the fake market to move - but only about 2KM away - maybe to stop so many tourists stumbling onto this place and suddenly finding 5000 more examples of their rare ming dynasty beads being sold for a fraction of the price they paid!!!

China is a real scream sometimes :)

November 2020

A note about "Tibetan skull bead malas."

It is credible that Tibetans made malas, using the skull bones of deceased monks and (supposedly) convicts. I don't know that anyone can be certain this tradition continues. It seems unlikely.

The thing is, the crania of all large mammals are going to be structurally similar.

Since the 1990s a lot of skull bone malas have been commercially produced. They are marketed as "Tibetan," but they are made in factories in Nepal. The material is probably from the skulls of water buffalos. It looks a great deal like human skull bone. However, the beads themselves have a mass-produced quality that is a give-away. They are very uniform, when compared to an old skull bone mala—where the beads are more individualistic. Also, in old malas, usually a few beads have been inlaid with small actual coral and turquoise stones. In the reproductions these "stones" are glass—and they appear in every other bead on the strand.

The reproduction beads are routinely sold at a cheap price. But, of course, it is very possible someone will pass one off as "authentic ancient human bone" and will ask a very high price for them.

JDA.

November 2020

A note about "Tibetan skull bead malas."

It is credible that Tibetans made malas, using the skull bones of deceased monks and (supposedly) convicts. I don't know that anyone can be certain this tradition continues. It seems unlikely.

The thing is, the crania of all large mammals are going to be structurally similar.

Since the 1990s a lot of skull bone malas have been commercially produced. They are marketed as "Tibetan," but they are made in factories in Nepal. The material is probably from the skulls of water buffalos. It looks a great deal like human skull bone. However, the beads themselves have a mass-produced quality that is a give-away. They are very uniform, when compared to an old skull bone mala—where the beads are more individualistic. Also, in old malas, usually a few beads have been inlaid with small actual coral and turquoise stones. In the reproductions these "stones" are glass—and they appear in every other bead on the strand.

The reproduction beads are routinely sold at a cheap price. But, of course, it is very possible someone will pass one off as "authentic ancient human bone" and will ask a very high price for them.

JDA.