Stefany, Probably you know about the Frost Collection of bead sample cards, at the Illinois State Museum, dated to about 1870?

http://www.museum.state.il.us/ismdepts/anthro/beads/StephenFrost_merchant.html

The large sets of samples sewn on cloth panels, dated 1855-1862, are maybe the precursors to later sample cards?

Shown in Panini's latest book, The World in a Bead, pp 130-133.

yes thanks Rosanna

hope you are well!
- next week i may be able to go to my studio where the books are. i also know that the British museum has the Levin sample book but the information about its date is not reliable at all..also the Sick sample cards in the Tropen museum in Holland, i have a booklet and a disc- but no DVD player!
i think i remember that Sibylle Jargstorff shows an image of a trade display..
we will have to be patient unless someone just happens to know for sure!

anyway this project involves going over lots of bead information which is fun and i'm rediscovering stuff i thought i knew and then forgot so the time is not being wasted...

finding photos i made years ago online is encouraging, also trying to remember bead names dates, origins, etc. and discovering connections.

keep safe everyone

Hi Stefany,
The whole Sick collection is online. You can find it here:

https://collectie.wereldculturen.nl/#/query/8d0f532c-9c4a-43f2-88fb-1568ace4f90f

You can enlarge the cards to examine the individual beads

Hi Stefany,
The whole Sick collection is online. You can find it with the URL below
You can enlarge the cards to examine the individual beads

I am pretty sure there should be earlier ones. This is one of the earliest ones I have seen, Lauscha, 1857.

that is good- 1857!
were they intended for trading to somewhere specific?

do we know the dates of the earliest Sick cards? i'll try to search a bit more and get to my bead reference library in the next week...if allowed...

the earliest cards on the dutch museum pages are listed as early 20th Century.

There is a picture of a card with french text by Jack de Witt here:

https://jackdewitt.smugmug.com/Beads/i-8NcJ9Tn/A

with cornalino d'Aleppo beads and others. Edition 1899

My copy of “Beads of the World” by Peter Francis Jr. is in storage so I can’t check... and I’m reasonably sure I posted the sample card shown in the book many years ago...It was a beautiful large sample card from the early 1800s... maybe someone can check and make sure I’m not imagining it?

The card says (in German) "since 1847" - so maybe that's what you recalled.

Francis noted that the company was in business until 1957. I think he was showing a sample card that was "fairly" recent, possibly post - WWII.

Another book not accessible...” Glass Beads from Europe” ... that may be where the sample card image is . Very fancy beads, early 1800s.

The sample card of Georgio Benedetto Barbaria, in the Technisches Museum in Vienna, is said by Jargstorf to be the oldest dated sample card, donated in 1815 to the "Habsburg monarch Franz First" - listed as Francis I, Emperor of Austria from 1804 - 1835, in Wikipedia.

I think I've seen better, complete pictures of this card elsewhere - I'll keep looking.

This thread also mentions the Barbari card and has a picture of part of it.

So perhaps the ca. 1760 pedestal can be considered a dated "sample card" of sorts?

http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi?fvp=/openforum/&cmd=iYz&aK=95611&gV=0&aO=1

From an early sample card?

interesting- the string includes 21 grey "job's tears" seeds that appear to have been threaded in-between the gorgeous Venetian glass beads to prevent damage perhaps- did you add them or did you get the strand as shown?

I got the strand as shown. It was really inexpensive.

The first sample cards (Venetian, from ca. 1825?) were made to be circulated at international expositions—such as happened at various locations in Europe in the 19th century. What became The World's Fair in the 20th century—such as Expo '67 in Montreal.

Some of these have been shown by Jargsdorf. Perhaps other authors.

By ca. 1850 Venetian cards were used as marketing devices—and, as you know, were sometimes for general distribution, and sometimes for specific markets.

To find and examine the earliest cards, I would seek the more-fancy "souvenir" editions, that proclaim the range of products, but were not intended to ilicit sales, per se.

It has been my attempt to "date" cards with no explicit dates, by the technical quality and styling of the cards themselves. And whether they have been hand-written or printed. And, of course, through great collections—such as at the Tropen Museum in Amsterdam.

(I have not read the other replies. I'm really here today for another purpose. But I will read them. Please forgive any duplication of ideas.) Jamey

In Beads # 14, Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers, there is an article with inventory by Karlis Karklins: "THE GIACOMUZZI BEAD SAMPLE BOOK AND FOLDERS". This sample book is dated between 1852 and 1869 with some nice pictures of pages from the book.

Courtesy of John Picard

thanks- its wonderful for display-
my question started in the hope that we could more accurately establish when the trading really started- as explorers, prospectors, colonisers or merchants began to do business to and fro...and take orders...?

Stefany, this may be covering old ground, but re: "...the hope that we could more accurately establish when the trading really started..."

Anna Weller of Big Bead Little Bead has a article on the "History of Venetian Glass Making" here: https://www.bigbeadlittlebead.com/guides_and_information/history_of_venetian_glass.php

References are noticeably lacking, but the article appears/may be a synopsis of several prior works. Possibly the references would be available. Under the section "Venetian Glass Making in the 15th & 16th Century", she states:

"Man-made glass was a largely unknown quantity in many of the new countries that these routes would open up. When combined with the high intrinsic value that Africans and Native Americans placed on decorative items, European merchants were set to make vast profits trading glass beads, metal beads, and porcelain beads for natural resources. This would give rise, to what can only be described as a Golden Age for glass bead production across Europe, centred on Venice and Bohemia, from the early 16th century to the close of the 18th Century.

In 1592, in order to meet this new market growth, the Venetian authorities allowed the glass factories to once again expand beyond Murano to many of the other islands in the lagoon of Venice, but in turn the ban on glass makers emigrating outside of Venice was extended to cover the whole Republic. To give an indication of this uplift in production, it is known that in 1525 Venice had 24 glassworks but by 1606 the register of glass bead producers alone had reached 251. By 1764 over two million pounds of beads were being made yearly in Venice alone. It has also been estimated that over 100,000 different Venetian glass trade bead designs were commissioned in Murano during this 200-year period, each with their own colour variations. Below you will see some examples spanning this period of production."