they look like drawn beads/slices. is the white layer visible on some of the outside surfaces a coating of some kind of decomposition or crust on the surface, or is it the remains of a layer of white glass after further layers have been scraped away? do you think they have been heated or melted a second time?
Stefany, thank you for your quick reply!
YES, that's exactly what they look like! Lapis blue base, with a white coating that looks 'scraped', but then smoothed again. E.g., there's no discernible deviation in actual thickness one each bead.
In fact, I used a scraping technique awhile back to make some polymer beads. After baking faux ivory shapes, I backfilled with black clay and scraped it off before rebaking. (see example photo)
And they look JUST LIKE these blue ones, but in glass.
All the beads on this strand are fairly uniform in size, only a variation of a millimeter or two. And all the beads are different in how much white appears.
There are some small pits, etc. And two shades of blue: slightly darker, and slightly lighter.
Unevenly sliced, but NOT anything like the handmade ones that are actually made in Africa of recycled glass.
I LOVE them and will use them sparingly in my designs.
Couldn't get image to post, trying again:
https://www.etsy.com/listing/825071943/bold-black-and-white-boho-striped-carved
There are beads from W. Africa that are essentially brick-red over translucent green ("green-heart" beads), that have been abraded—and part or most of the red glass is removed.
Having seen a number of specimens, I suppoose some were made at Venice. I'm thinking of beads that are red on one side and green on the other, that do not appear to have been abraded. But many were African-altered—and these do appear abraded and somewhat clumsy.
I suppose your beads were African-altered, using a grinding wheel. When I was in Ghana in 1998 and 2005, the grinding wheels that were available to glassworkers were not devised to accomplish such work. They were rotary cranked wheels, made to hone blades. And they did not work efficiently on glass. The beads would snap-away from the wheels, and had to be repositioned. The smaller the beads are, the more difficult the work will be. Precision would not be expected.
JDA.
They look to be drawn glass beads. I wonder if the white on the outside of the bead could be the result of a chemical reaction of the glass resulting in devitrification?
