Hello Sammi,

Identifying beads, especially plain beads, from a photo can be a challenge.

Your beads (one in particular) do look like bone.

Bone is an organic material, that is the most-mineralized substance a vertebrate animal makes. Bone has a specific structure, that you can see with a hand lens. Bone has tiny pores running through it, that are blood vessels. (Except in the particular bone that is dental—teeth and tusks.) Since bone is often carved, it's structure is something you can determine. Longitudinal areas will have fine dark lines where the vessels were. In the cross section, these appear as dark dots.

However, some bone products are filled, to present a clean plain white surface.

Also, some vegetal materials have a longitudinal/spotty grain—though it is usually more-coarse than we see in bone. Bamboo and palm wood are two materials like this.

In general, artificial materials have a homogenous unpatterned structure. I'm thinking of materials like plastic, ceramic, and (to some degree) glass. If you examine the surfaces, and do not see any sign of structure, this might suggest an artificial material.

The best identifications come from recognition—and, unfortunately, I do not recognize your beads.

You have them. What can you determine from the above?

Jamey

Hi Jamey,

Thankyou for your reply, there is certainly a lot of structure within the beads. I have just been looking at some beads I know to be bone and these with a loup and I am honestly non the wiser…lol the grey colour could just be a dye and the stone like hardness could be down to the highly polished nature, though something still nags at me perhaps they are petrified wood. I do like a mystery…

I can see a resemblance to some beads that i have which may be Prosser-moulded from ceramic and vitreous ingredients that look grainy even when fused together under heat and pressure- because they look very dense - yet most identical sizes … the graininess may be because the materials were different colours before fusing…?

Interesting, even though I thought that they felt like glass I never actually entertained the notion that they might be glass!
Thankyou I will ponder on that one.
I love a good mystery