Half of the strand is lampworked. aka surface applied decorations.
Scott, there are other Venetian beads in the African trade that have been filed down like this - my feeling is that the artisans in Africa occasionally modified beads to suit their tastes.
Here's a set in my collection - I guess someone just didn't like the stripes...
Maybe I just haven't closely examined the cheap strands of mixed beads the Traders offer - full of broken and worn beads. That's probably where they dispose of filed ones. Thanks.
here is another example, donated by floor, with some unchanged examples for comparison
Opaque wound pinks with blue/white eyes were sometimes ground to a sort of cornerless cube shape, too. I'm sure there are other examples.
These kind of beads occur in Ghana and were cut by Ashante and the Krobo-people.
Especially the Ashante cut decoration away from yellow Venetian beads, referring to the gold beads worn by their chiefs
