The "end of day" description comes from the idea that a glassworker, at the end of his/her workday making beads or other glass items, has a collection of crumbs and broken tail ends of glass rods that they "cleaned up" by making a few beads and rolling them in the crumbs.
The story is probably apocryphal since the most of crumb beads I've handled do not seem to be "one-offs" - they appear to be deliberately decorated with a uniform selection of colors, sizes, etc. The exception may be some of the large & chunky Venetian trade beads with highly irregular decoration.
I'll look for an example of the large beads I'm thinking of and post it in a bit.
This is the type of bead I was thinking of.
Yes, exactly. Most beads erroneously called end of day are uniform and regular, obviously part of the "product line" of the company. This is what bothers me.
This bead really looks "unplanned".
All Venetian, except for the five large ones up left in the second picture which are recycled Krobo beads.
JP
These are good examples of crumb and frit beads beads, part of the product line.
Are there any examples of 'true' end of day beads? I'm trying to learn if the term has much, if any, relevance to beads. How would we recognize them with any certainty?
