more pics

last two pics

hi,i took theses pics by myself,and edited nothing about them.
i bought these coral beads from a lama in aba near to tibet,these beads would not lose the red in water or some organic liquor.

The color does not look natural to me, if I trust the color of my monitors (2 LaCies). Can you try Methyl Ethyl Ketone on one?

hi,thanks for your suggestion,but i have no Methyl Ethyl Ketone by my hands,i would have a try later.thanks

I was in Shenzhen in China today looking at a lot of very similar coral.
Larger beads like the ones pictured in this thread are commonly water dyed in China. They are sold all over the world and often misrepresented.

You can see examples of small size oil dyed (better, more stable quality) and larger water dyed (usually more irregular, less uniform dying, less stable dyes) on my website at the link below:

if you see carefully,you can see the difference between the dyed bamboo coral on your pic and my red coral beads,especially the lines and light on their surface.

This is a necklace composed of old, genuine Mediterranean coral beads I sold four years ago. The larger beads are aprox.10 mm. Their colour is a deep saturated red, but they have as well some white spots (I arranged them for the photo as to show their best face).

In real life this coral looks less opaque. Largest 10x10mm.

Even after reworking, the color values don't match.

Sure, my necklace was of a darker, richer red than 999beads'.But corals from the same sea show great variance of hues.

One way to see whether its dyed coral or not, using a loupe, is that coral is basically porous.
Some dense areas may be less permeable, so would remain pale, but if a liquid dye has been applied then within the natural cracks and fissures you would see areas where the colorant has concentrated and is darker or stronger.
It is even more pronounced if the colour includes pigment not just a dissolved solution.
Either way, the colour may have penetrated more or less deeply depending on the porosity of the material.
Pigment is really any finely ground-up opaque substance suspended in a gum or binding medium of some kind, and may not behave quite the same as a liquid dye, -imagine the difference between ink and acrylic paint.
Your coral looks to me as though it may be natural, from further east than the mediterranean.
A valuable test only slightly compromising the value of the strand would be to file, saw or break one small bead in half. If the colour goes all the way through then it really is its own natural colour!

Stefany

Hi Stefany,

There are several techniques used in China today to dye coral.
They tell me the "oil dye" method entails "boiling" the coral in a solution of dye and oil for up to a month. (Boiling or at least kept very hot, I'm not quite sure.) This is commonly used for smaller beads ad penetrates all the way through the bead. Because of the smaller size of the oil dye beads (usually up to 8mm) they may discard any that white or black patches.

The "water dye" is a water based solution, not soaked for as long and, presumably, not as hot a bath. I've had broken water dye beads where the color penetrates all the way to the center but I've also seen many with white or whitish patches that did not take any dye.

There is also a surface only method often used on carved shapes like skulls and lucky horns. This does not penetrate at all. I've never been able to learn if it is the same dye as the "water dye" or if it is just dipped or painted.

By the way, Stefany, I've tried to e-mail you about helping me with some UK bead society payments. Have you ever received my e-mails? Please click on the link to e-mail me through this forum if you can help me with that.

Hi Russ,

I am surprised to read your statement that "they may discard any that [has] white or black patches."

There is a significant tradition of having coral of this description, among Tibetans. Perhaps elsewhere. I have always found it to be very attractive. So it would surprise me if anyone discarded this material. Even if such beads were dyed, they would fit in with natural coral beads that people like, and for which there is already a tradition.

As I mention elsewhere in the thread, the beads 999 shows look exactly like beads I remember from the first Tibetan coral beads I know of to be brought back to the US, in the early 1970s. The beads I acquired at that time had been bought in the Tibetan Market in Delhi. I still have some of them.

Jamey

hehe,its just because i took these photos in lighter conditiong.

nice beads!

nice beads!

The pink coral with white spots comes from the Pacific and the white spots are created by the branches (that are no longer there). The darker red coral came from the Mediterranean and off the coast of Yemen etc. The coral beds in the Mediterranean have been killed by polution and there are not many left. Most of the coral that is on the market today is from the Pacific. cheers, Judy

White spots in undyed coral don't need an explanation, but how comes white spots are there after dying?

Moisture was still trapped in the coral and the oil base dye did not displace it.

Here's a necklace of black (brown) coral that I got last summer. I tweaked the close-up to bring out the grain in the coral. Enjoy.

Perlengarten

Hello Perlengarten,

As you can read in posts I have left recently, where coral is discussed, "black coral" of the horn-like coral family is actually transparent or translucent red. There is brown coral, but this isn't it.

Jamey

Oh, I thought the above posts were referring to the black coral with silver inlay used to make Yemen prayer beads. See first image. The Yemen black coral is very different in appearance from the black coral necklace I showed.

Jamey, you always make me do my research. According to the National Museum of Natural History "Black coral, ... can grow to over 2 meters and is commonly used to make jewerly and figurines. Coral collectors in the tropics can get over $100 for a pound of raw black coral."

The Field Museum of Chicago has a nice article on how to clean black coral, see this link: http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mailing-lists/cdl/2003/1267.html.

Finally, Wikipedia tells us that "black coral is a term given to a group of deep water, tree-like coral related to sea anemone which normally occurs in the tropics....Though its living tissue is brilliantly colored, black coral takes its name from the distinctive black or dark brown color of its skeleton." I've given their link and repeated their photo below. The second image might account for the confusion, the dead spine is, indead, black. Only the living tissue is red.

The trader told me that it was illegal to harvest black coral today, due to conservation methods. The necklace he sold to me came from coral harvested before the "ban" was in place and was "very old".

Perlengarten,

Hi Nancy,

Your reply is difficult to follow, in part because one of your images seems to be missing, and I don't know what you mean by "the first image." This post or your previous post?

Corals that are black (or "black") might be either stony corals, or horn-like corals. I have been discussing the horn-like corals. These are fished in the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, and the Pacific Ocean. They may be different varieties, but they are from one branch (no pun intended) of the coral family—the horn-like (non-stony, non-reef-building, non-brain-like) corals. The animals are dendritic. (Shaped like trees, with a "foot," a trunk, and branches.) The polyps reside at the tips of branches, and are responsible for the continued growth and branching of the animal.

ALL corals are equally related to sea anemones. It's a different branch of the same phylum.

The external living tissue of corals—their coenosarc ("co-en-o-sark")—is continuous with the membranes of the polyps and the foot. The coenosarc is very much like a skin or a bark (to use the tree comparison). These are the "live" parts of any coral. The internal structure, the "skeleton," that is what we normally think of as "coral," is considered to be non-living.

I have not, to my knowledge, ever seen a living black coral. I cannot say what color the coenosarc may be in any horn-like corals. When coral is processed, the first drying application causes the coenosarc to wither and wrinkle, and (no doubt) to darken (or lighten, in the case of some stony corals). The coenosarc is scraped away or otherwise removed, revealing the skeleton.

This skeleton—the actual black coral—is dark colored and may look black or brownish. But it is composed of thin translucent red layers. I cannot say this any more clearly than I have three times now (!). In saying the material is "red," I am not referring to the coenosarc.

The oldest use of this material with which I am familiar is for making Islamic prayer beads, that often have silver-inlaid dots (actually, like short nails). Reportedly, this material was fished from the Red Sea. It might come from anywhere (of the above). These beads ARE popular in Yemen. Also anywhere, in any country, along the Eastern Mediterranean. I could not put the origin of these beads at any single place—and it's possible they were made in more than one place, over time. I am reasonably sire some of these beads are antique, but I doubt they are hundreds of years old. There are recent and new similar beads, and there are plastic imitations (from the 1930s and later). Similar-looking beads could be made from black horn or wood—and these would be difficult to tell apart without a careful examination.

The MATERIAL of black coral is very thin laminations of protein, formed in rings (very similar in growth patterns to what happens when a tree makes wood). The material is dark colored, but is essentially RED. There may be varieties that are more brownish than red—but the hundreds of beads I have examined look pretty red under a magnifying lens.

I have heard many times that black coral is protected. In particular, it's said that laws protect the harvesting of black and/or gold coral (that is also "black") around the Hawaiian Islands. In the 1970s, when black and gold coral first appeared in the bead marketplaces (of my experience), it came from the Philippines. Whether there is much international protection, I cannot say. But I am greatly in favor of protecting ALL creatures that supply us with organic materials—from elephants to teak trees. But stories about the great age of some beads (because the material is supposedly "protected"), are often just made-up selling factors. The stories are told to increase the importance and rarity of the piece, as well as to get around conservation fears of potential buyers. In any event, at the present time black and gold corals are very available, and are not pricey (especially when compared to precious corals).

Be well. Jamey

Dear 999,

Your coral beads are consistent with beads I saw and acquired in the early 1970s from Tibet. Their color is a fairly bright red, and they have white spots (embellished with black that is not part of the coral, I think). While the coral may be from the Pacific, I think the Mediterranean may have something similar. Conversely, it is equally possible the Neapolitan beadmakers imported and cut Pacific coral, too. But most Tibetan coral beads were made in Italy; though many Chinese coral beads are Mediterranean or Pacific. From China, the coral that most often has white spots is orange or salmon-colored—and not usually the red of Tibetan coral.

I would not be inclined to suspect your beads of being dyed nor new.

Jamey