Hi
First I would like to say hello to this board. I have been a long time lurker and I thought it was about time I got involved with all the great people here.

I have to agree with you Jamey here are some definitions of the word rare:
Not widely known; especially valued for its uncommonness;
Not widely distributed;
Marked by an uncommon quality; especially superlative or extreme of its kind

So yes these would be considered rare chevrons. I think one of the problems with the word rare is that in most peoples mind they equate rare with value. If it is rare it must be expensive. There are many rare beads out there that are not necessarily highly valued.
Thank you for showing us these nice chevrons.

BeadWeyr

Single canes that yield a small amount of beads would be rarer than canes that yielded more beads of equal sizes. How long is a "standard" cane? There is no "Mother" as in Sourdough bread, so all canes would be "single" canes, with the chance of becoming "unique" because of a slight difference in layering. A missed mold on a layer, a color variation, an unusual alignment, all these could produce a unique cane, yielding "rare" beads. Since cane pulling is a hand done, man made process, there will be "errors" and variations. I reflect on the United States Mint, the office responsible for making our coinage, the coins are machine made using master dies which produce exact copies by the millions. (oversimplified explanation but it pertains to this thought process) even with the strictest controls and super computer assist there are still errors! These errors would be considered rarities if they slip through quality control and make it into circulation (as many do)...getting back to beads, the custom cane yields a rare color combo for now, if the maker keeps it at the quantity already produced, if however the maker decides to make hundreds of canes and thousands of beads for whatever reason, the rarity factor would disappear real fast. I believe Art has created canes yielding one or two beads, these would be be considered rare, unless of course, he decides to make multitudes of copy canes and the beads there from. Just some thoughts, Thomas

BTW cool beads

PS. Some would argue that a variation of a "standard" bead from standard cane would not be a rare bead since so many "normal" beads of a type are in circulation, I strongly disagree, I believe if a variation is of noticable and recognizable nature, the bead would be a rarity....funny thing is, there are many old 7layer chevrons with "messed up" layers, actually enough of them to be considered a "standard" variety.

Art please correct me if I’m wrong on what I say.

When Art was being filmed for Solo Performance the people doing the filming asked Art what was the most layers he ever heard of in a chevron, don’t really remember what he told them but I think it was around twenty. Anyway they talked Art into making a truly multi layer cane.

I don’t want to try to tell the story of how this cane came to be, but I believe it took Art three steps counting the first gather to accomplish the results you see below. Hopefully Art will chime in on this thread and fill all of us in on what it took to get the final cane.

If memory serves me right Art only got seven of these 15 layer beads from the cane, he did get other amazing slices, but only the seven pieces had a hole. .......... A very small hole!!

Ammmmmmmmazzzzzzzzzinnnnnnnnnng. I’m proud and thrilled to own the one I do.

Needless to say Art has to be the top in the world when it comes to killer chevrons.

Love you Art .............. Danny

If you have not seen Solo Performance go to you tube and search Art Seymour/Solo Performance its 28 minutes and well worth watching if you like watching a master artist doing his thing and sharing his love for what he does.

Hello Danny,

In my opinion, any star beads with more than seven layers count as "rare." And, the more layers they have, the rarer they are..., until someone begins cranking-out such beads in vast quantities.

When Art made the fifteen-layer cane, he did this in a series of two embellishments onto a previously made cane. He made a seven-layer cane; then added four more layers to part of it (for eleven layers); followed by four more layers to part of that (for a total of fifteen layers).

In my collection, I own a single specimen of the eleven-layer beads—mine being a short (but still plump) discoidal bead.

We can see it here in reflected and transmitted light—the latter easily demonstrating the beauty of the translucent red layers.

Your bead is quite beautiful—and certainly a rare prize. I like mine too.

Jamey

Here are some chevrons that I would call rare but that are not really chevrons. These beads were made from old Murrini Cane that was cut ground and drilled into beads. These were purchased in the early 90's in Murano.

Some nice patterns there.
I love these type of beads.

Here are some examples of the type of canes they were made from.

Here are two more groups of floral pseudo-rosetta beads, made from millefiori canes, that have been cut and drilled. From the Liese Collection in Arizona.

JDA.

Hello BW,

If you read Part IV of my series on rosetta beads (Ornament 1983), you will see that it's dedicated to unusual beads—including those from floral-patterned canes. (This was also included in my paper for The Glass Trade Bead Conference, held the previous year and also published in '83). I believe I was the first bead researcher to define and include these beads in the greater scheme of rosetta beads—and to devise names for them. I know I was the first researcher to list the characteristics of rosetta beads, so that they could be compared to one another (for similarity or differences).

At that time, there were painfully few generalizations about these beads. It was recognized that 7-layer beads were early, and later beads had fewer layers. ALL these beads were called "chevron" beads (despite the advice of Brent 100 years earlier). One author even said 'chevron beads are so much alike, they are useless for archaeological dating, because we can't tell one from another.' (Paraphrasing.) I did not believe that was accurate, and began to synthesize a new way of dealing with these issues.

"Rosetta" is the name of the family of beadmaking, and encompasses solid canes (as typically used in millefiori work), and hollow canes (typically used in chevron and similar beads). It is also a handy name for the non-starry canes that resemble flowers. A flower cane yields a "flower bead" (just as a star cane yields a "star bead"). A cut flower bead yields a "scallop bead" (just as a cut star cane yields a "chevron bead"). And other variations are possible and nameable.

I likewise have and have documented the series of "pseudo chevron beads" and "pseudo rosetta beads" made in the early 1990s from solid rosetta canes—including those that featured floral patterns, were cut in the styles of chevron beads, but that required drilling. They are naturally included in my catalogue of rosetta beads—though they form their own particular area. (Until recently, when the Chinese began making "chevron beads." and their beads were routinely drilled from solid canes, over the first editions, whether a "chevron bead" had a drilled perforation or not was not much of an issue—because they were so unusual. Nevertheless, my schemata already included the possibility.)

By the way, there is no Italian word "murrini." The singular is "murrina," and the plural is "murrine" (pronounced "moor-REE-neh"). It's the same with "rosetta" (singular = "ro-SET-tah," and plural = "ro-SET-teh"). Products made from murrine canes (that are not beads) have generally been characterized as "murrine + whatever-they-are" products. For instance "vasa murrine" (a millefiori vessel). The use of this name in conjunction with beads has largely come about due to the naming influence of current American beadmakers. It was not typical in the glass literature before this time—and the "i" ending is incorrect.

Be well. Jamey

Hi Jamey
Thank you for the informatin and clarification of nomenclature.
BeadWeyr

HI Jamey,
Indeed, they are really neat beads! I still haven't used mine in a necklace, but fully intend to. I do wish Jody hadn't lost the name of the artist. I loved hearing how the whole arrangement happened - it's like a bead fantasy adventure for a graphic novel or something.

If we open the discussion to include non-Venetian beads, the picture changes pretty radically, since no industry, whether commercial or individual, has competed with the output of Venice, spanning over 500 years. So, almost any other makers of chevron beads might be considered to have made "rare" beads; and it would be difficult to characterize any of them as being "common."

And among the smaller output of limited-edition rosetta-beadmakers, there must be variations that would be considered rather more rare, because there are few specimens of what might be considered odd or experimental beads.

Let's take these beads as an example. A number of years ago, I had a conversation with Art Seymour about the relationship between rosetta beads and the so-called "Nueva Cádiz" beads of the 16th century. My idea was that both bead types were made at Venice, and I felt that certain specimens tended to prove this—such beads being typical star beads that were square in cross section (like NC beads), and long twisted (and striped) square-cross-section beads that have starry interiors. I said that if we could find a square-cross-section bead with a starry interior in the typical NC colors (blue and white), or star beads made in the blue-&-white color scheme of NC beads, that would perhaps be the best evidence we are likely to find (apart from things like chemical analyses, and sound archaeological evidence, of course). Art decided to make a series of beads that combined these attributes into one cane—and he made long tubular beads as well as cut chevron beads—as we see here.

Jamey

P.S. - I returned to this topic in my paper on Trade Beads, composed for the IBBC in Istanbul two years ago. In that paper I show various historical specimens of pertinent beads, such as the above, as well as a blue-&-white a-speo star bead (that may be a 17th C. Dutch bead—but might be Venetian). This was one of the first opportunities to publish on this topic, lately, and show the results of my research, and to reiterate ideas I have promoted for quite a long time.