Though the patterns do not look familiar to me, the type of hole, the colors and the way one is cracked, looks very much like some of the antique Japanese beads I have seen. Perhaps others can chime in?

Against daylight all layers are dense matte.
Held against a LED lamp the 2 green beads stay matte, the 2 brown with swirls stay matte,
But the 3 blue with swirls: all colours stay matte except the blue which is translucent.

Can you please expand on the significance of the red being translucent or not. Thank you.

In brief terms:

There is an ancient group of beads that are typically black, with white trails that have been combed into zigzags, of Middle Eastern origin. Some of these have an opaque brick-red trail over the white trail—thus being bicolored.

There is also a group of European trade beads, that have a very similar appearance. However, the red glass is translucent. And I have proposed that these beads copy or imitate the ancient beads—and that they date from post-1825, this being the provisional time that the Venetian industry seems to have begun exploiting translucent red glass. However, since it seems that the Bohemians had this glass earlier, I say it's possible such beads MIGHT be fom earlier than 1825, and made in Bohemia. (Unfortunately, there is no explicit documentation that supports these ideas; and this was before the time that sample cards became an industry standard.)

But, in any event, we can distinguish between the ancient beads and modern beads because of the differences in the opacity-or-translucency of the red glasses. Also (and very important!), is the fact that the ancient beads were furnace-wound; and the modern beads are lampworked. It is fairly common that the trade beads have been passed-off as "ancient" beads.

The beads you are showing us look like yet another iteration. They don't really look like either previous group. But they might be inspired by either group. I asked about the diaphaneity of the red glass as a beginning.

Unfortunately, photos, while being much better than nothing, cannot substitute for being able to examine a bead in-person. What I see are some characteristics that are difficult to comprehend, unless I can see the conformations in-the-round.

But I have to suspect these are recent beads. And the candidates are Java (but not excluding India or China—though these seem less-likely). Your beads also seem to be somewhat smaller than the beads they imitate.

I will show some past dialogues.

Jamey

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=iYz&aK=40534&iZz=40534&gV=0&kQz=&aO=1&iWz=0

The beads shown in this dialogue include a few of the combed beads; but it's mostly about the agate-glass beads—that are part of the same issues (since these also include translucent red glass in some versions—AND these beads are also routinely misrepresented as "ancient").

So this is another round of explaining technical aspects (glass colors and lampwork fabrication) that are revealing. JDA.

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=iYz&aK=65625&iZz=65625&gV=0&kQz=&aO=1&iWz=0

If I manage to get better ones I'll post them later on.

I wish I could join you in Tucson with the beads, but unfortunately that won't be the case. I'll try a better picture tomorrow, but I know my macro lens no longer works perfectly, or rather the camera that goes along with it. I'll try anyway.

hi Martine,
This strand is collected in 2008 and the beads are made in East Java. What do you think of the blue and green bead?
The size of the beads resemble yours. Would love to see the morfias
best wishes to all.

This is the rest of the strand. I'm afraid there are some other questionmarks.
- I have never seen a clear glass morfia. So I wonder

- there is one bead with eyes, and I wonder if they were not added afterwards. The pictures don't really show, but they were inserted.It looks like it is a mix of two types of beads.

- there is a bead with translucent blue that looks zo well preserved it might be a copy?

All comments are wellcome. I merely know these type of beads from books, so I am a neophyte

Hi Martine,
This lot of beads look confident to me, but I can see no morfia between them.
Your kind of folded clear transparent bead I have never seen, but transparent glass was used in the Levant in the old days, so it is possible this is an old one too.

what is the right definition of Murfia: do you refer to the bigger beads with red, green, yellow, and which specific time and place are we talking about then?
I think the term 'Murfia' is being loosely used amongst the traders in the Sahel.

I was more thinking about these kind of beads when mentioning morfia, see link.
and the half bead shown here, taken from my Boulevard of Broken Beads photostream.

I've too little time to let the seller know, so thanks for your help!

This is a long dialogue about morfia and other Mauritanian beads. It generated some hostile replies, and some nonsense—but that was not infrequent from some participants.

The beads you have been showing as "morfia" are folded beads—that are very different. A search on "Mali folded bead" would probably reveal several dialogues.

Happy 2020 Martine. Jamey

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=iYz&aK=48163&iZz=48163&gV=0&kQz=&aO=1&iWz=0