This shot shows the necklace partially knotted, and casually sitting on a paper plate that was handy.

JDA.

Here's the finished knotted necklace, shown in a "double U" configuration (that requires a fastener to be worn). The owner can also turn the necklace into a figure eight, and place each loop around her neck—and the appearance from the front will be the same.

JDA

These two shots show the necklace very close. Although the color seems to be painfully brilliant red, in real life it is bright but not strident, and there is a lot of color variation, even in a single bead.

The necklace beads were purchased a few years ago, and will be difficult to replace now. But the owner has recently acquired some new coral beads that are also quite nice.
Note that the color is again very bright red, but the shapes are more individualistic, and overall smaller.

JDA.

These strands of new beads are similar in color and size, but have what I would call a "rice" shape—being tiny long oval beads. So this group is more carefully shaped.

I hope this has been fun. Personally (as many of you know) coral is my most favorite bead material—so I have enjoyed handling and documenting these beauties.

Jamey

Coral is also one of my most favorite bead materials. This is a beautiful, versatile necklace! I am impressed with the construction of your own tailored knotting cord of multiple-ply, twisted onto a hand-done wire needle, hand made the same way the Griffin brand is manufactured ( do I remember the brand name correctly?).........What brand of silk thread did you use, and is it readily available?

Hi Joyce.

Thanks for your comments. I buy threads, cords, and lines all the time, everywhere I find them. For silk, the usual thing is to go to a good sewing notions store, and buy Button-Hole Twist, that comes in lots of colors. For the present beads I didn't find a local store that had it, so I was forced to use thread that is used for sewing machines. It being quite a lot thinner. Plus the holes of the coral were small but larger than typical.

About two weeks ago, I used these same threads (in bright emerald green) to string up a nice necklace of Imperial green "jade" beads. (I'm not sure what they are, but they were gorgeous!) It took seventeen strands, doubled for thirty-four, to fill the perforations. It was worth it for the result.

I also like larger hand-made silk lines when I can find them, and braided silk lines.

Jamey

This is the "jade" necklace I knotted a couple of weeks ago, on emerald-green silk—using thirty-four strands.

The beads are nominally "jade"—but I can't say what actual material. Their color is a uniform bright deep green, and the texture of the stone is translucent with a crystalline pattern. Whatever they are, it's a pretty strand of beads.

I'm showing them close up as I received them, followed by the finished necklace.

Jamey

are the knots formed with a special needle? I tried knotting just once and to my dismay, it was not easy at all! In fact, I abandoned the project!

Hi Christine,

Do you mean do I use a needle tool to create a knot? (Needles are not for knotting. They are for getting a bead onto the line. The needles I mostly use I make myself from 34 gauge wire.)

If you meant to ask if I use a tool to make a knot, the answer is no. I believe the best tools are your hands--and that when you use an unnecessary tool you remove yourself a step from the work. I have nothing against anyone else using a tool, but I think it's a crutch, and I teach people to knot without one.

Knotting is not difficult--though silk thread demands its own set of requisites. You just have to learn the right way to do it. And, the work can be very repetitive and boring--and you can't lose concentration, because if one knot is wrong the whole necklace is a failure. So it demands patience and perseverance.

Jamey

I would love to learn to knot like you. I tried it once and failed miserably! i would never had imagined that it would be so difficult!

Christine come to London and join a class-

When I teach the basic class, after working 5 necklace techniques of increasing fineness which dont involve knotting, we reach the high point of the class, (=necklaces at "Knightsbridge" level) =traditional pearl knotting using precious metal gimp with the clasps.

I offer at least 3 methods (also shown in my books) for doing the knots.

In the trade even in the '60s stringers worked on a light-coloured velvet cloth.

I use my fingers and pull the knots close with my fingernails, but I've seen stringers working the knots around the point of a hatpin, or very fine pointed watchmakers tweezers allow you to grip the central thread through the centre of the loop in such a way that as you pull it has to tighten where you want it.

A lot of words but simple when you get into the rhythm!

Stefany

I think adjichristine may be thinking of the pearl knotter device that is sold many places--a big wooden handle with three different things sticking out one end and it comes with a video. I've never used one myself but was asked how to use them when I had my shop. Once I showed people how to do it themselves they thought, like I do, that the device is more trouble than it's worth. I worked with a lady some years ago who's mother had been Mikkimoto's head stringer/knotter for MANY years and had the good fortune to see a number of examples of her work-she didn't use the device either. Keep in mind, too, that there are several "correct" ways to knot. I often had people call me about restringing their priceless heirloom pearls only to find that they were glass but I did have one lady with many strings of beautiful pearls who wore them all the time(until they broke) and wanted them strung on nylon for durability and it was such a joy to work with them. Except that one strand of 36" of perfectly matched 8mm champagne color pearls--took forever to find the right thread and four tries to get it right but it is so worth it when you can restore a beloved object to everyday use. She had had them for 40+ years and nearly passed out when I gave her an idea of what they were worth.
Juel

Hi Juel,

Any thin long needle can be used as a tool for placing a knot—but it is totally unnecessary (as I mentioned above). A more complicated instrument would be an even greater time-waster. It's true there is more than one way to string a necklace—but some ways are pointedly silly. I knew a woman some years ago who strung all of the beads onto the line, and then had to run that line—beads and all— through every loop she made when tying a knot. I thought it was ridiculous—but she thought it was the best way to insure that all of the beads would go on the line. The one good thing about her approach was that the line of beads was shorter by one bead with every knot she tied. Go figure.

One of my advantages as a bead researcher and artist is that I have a long-time experience dealing with whatever issue appears. I believe in working smoothly, effectively, and accurately, to get the best possible outcome. And in my classes, this is what I teach.

Yes, restoring a beautiful necklace (or composing a new one) gives one a great feeling of accomplishment. And making a client happy is a worthwhile goal. I am pretty successful.

Be well. Jamey

Hey -I put every bead onto the thread first! Then they dont get lost and I can sit in front of the telly or even on a train and get on with the knotting.
You put the OTHER end through each knot as you go, the end without all the beads of course.
Otherwise you have to keep threading each bead on singly, dangling threads and needles and you cant do the special clever stuff with gimp which I teach.
I didnt invent it, but had to work it out for myself because you could see the results on old necklaces when taken apart for rethreading, but nobody in the business in the '60s would show me.
Finally I simplified the technique to a point where it was possible to demonstrate and pass on.
When I get an imaging tutorial with my brand new computer I PROMISE to give some pictures...
Stefany

Hi Stefany,

In a perfect world, if you wanted to make a perfect or proficient necklace, and all the beads were perfect, and all of their perforations were uniform, stringing a necklace would not be such a chore—though it would demand appropriate skill.

In the real world, beads are hand-made artifacts, and often differ one from another, even in the same group. One of my accomplishments is what I call "seating a bead"—by which I mean that for any particular bead and its placement, I choose a way of holding it in that place. I provide a foundation for it to sit upon. Many times, this foundation is nothing more than a knot, or series of knots or passes (in multiple-line fancy stringing, such as macramé and other techniques I use). But sometimes the basic strategy for a necklace will fail when an eccentric bead is included. This might be a bead with an unexpectedly large or small perforation, or with a conical or biconical tunnel, making the aperture(s) oversize. I have several strategies to deal with these problems.

However, these are easiest to deal with when the beads are not already placed on a strand for knotting. So, rather than string all the beads in advance, and then unstring them when there's an unexpected problem (only to restring them again, and possibly again), I choose to string a bead when I am ready to place it.

In the series of photos I posted above, where we see the necklace at partial construction (on a paper plate), I stopped there because I ran into a bead that had a tight perforation (in comparison to the rest). I had to enlarge the perforation before I could proceed—which is why I also took the photo then.

Be well. I look forward to your visuals. Jamey

Stafany-I, too, use the prestringing method and I, perhaps, learned it from one of your books but I tried it the other way first and found that by prestringing I also avoided the hassle of dealing with a bead that had a hidden surprise(though those beads can often be turned into earrings).
Juel

At the main pearl market in Manila you can see usually the older Muslim women knotting strings of pearls, their fingers moving too fast to follow.

They use several strands of silk and no tools but nimble fingers as they move pearls one by one from the unknotted strand to the necklace they are knotting. They can make a decent necklace in just a few minutes.

For the same client who had the red coral, she also had a very long strand of knotted pearls, that had come apart. So, the strand had to be re-closed to be an opera-length necklace that you can wrap three or four times around your neck. THANKFULLY, I didn't have to restring the entire thing. I just had to unknot six beads to give myself enough silk line to retie some new closing knots.

It is actually a very nice necklace of baroque fresh-water pearls.

Jamey

Thank you so much. That was so interesting! Did you photograph the pearls??

Sadly, no photo.