I've been meaning to post a pictures of these beads that came up in an earlier thread. These two are similar to the ones that Max of Bead Bros had posted on the Trades page. Unfortunately, the pictures (as usual for me) are not very good, but if you look at them in comparison to the ones that Carl and Alex posted in the other thread, you can see, I hope, how different these 7th or 8th century beads are from the contemporary drilled bottle-glass versions.

As I said, the glass is quite different, and even though these old beads have been buried and knocked about a lot, they have a lovely soft feel to them. And they're made, as Jamey has pointed out, quite differently. Like the blue biconical Jatims, it's hard at first to figure out what is going on in their manufacture, because the bubbles go in different directions, though primarily aligned to the perforation. They're not wound or drawn, as they sometimes appear to be at first sight; they're made from rolled pads, which frequently seem also to be stretched along the mandrel that the glass is wrapped around. Afterwards they're faceted individually, which accounts for the wide variation in shape and size. The faceting process tends to conceal the rolled pad construction, but you can often see tell-tale signs of the joint around the perforation.

The green are generally smaller and less commonly found than the blue, and they have a beautiful glow that the blue ones don't have. Along with all the other kinds of Jatim beads, they help us to see the amazing amount of technological experimentation that was going on in that remote early East Javanese culture that we still know so little about.

Incidentally, I also really like the new drilled bottle glass beads; they're a different species is all.

Cheers,

Will