Best regards,
Melissa

The more 'upmarket' tubes are (like Mel H said) akin to the 'Russian' blues - often pentagonal or hexagonal in cross-ection and often multilayered.

We recently spoke about Waltrad Neuwirth's book 'Perlen aus Gablonz' and the Society of Bead Researchers reprinting of the English section in there - this book has a terrific amount of information about these beads, including images of hanks and strands and amazing colours.

They are also found in NW native american pieces, and the Bead Soc of GB has recently been told about some good pieces in the Royal Alberta Museum in Ontario.

I'll try and dig out some other images. This would make a good thread.

Cheers
Carole

today Sönke visited me with his bell-pull (and some very nice beads...), and the used beads are not as different as in my memory (I thought the beads were much darker...), but as mine all beads are hexagonal in cross-section. His one is 210cm long (wow - high rooms at this time!) and 10cm in diameter. The long milky tubes at the bottom are 7cm long and the tubes in the middle of the bell-pull are gold colored from inside.
Would love to see Waltrad Neuwirth's book 'Perlen aus Gablonz', but the prices I have found are behind my limits...:-)
So, Carole, maybe you find some images of other examples...?
Warm Regards
Uwe

A lovely piece!

The Society of Bead Researchers has recently published all the colour and bw images and all the English text in a new 160 page version:

http://www.beadresearch.org/Pages/Journal_Contents.html

In the UK, the Bead Society of Gt Britain is holding copies for the SBR and selling them to anyone interested, normally by pick-up at events, but I will send the odd one out to non-UK residents if the full postage is paid to the BSGB along with the book price:

http://www.beadsociety.org.uk/SBR.htm

So you could get a copy from either the SBR or the BSGB (and any other BCN member could do the same).

Let me know if I can help

Cheers
Carole

Although the image is not brilliant (it was taken from a TV screen shot) it has some good examples of green and amber sprengperlen used in the fringe of a Great Lakes region bandoleer bag (probably Chippewa) dating to the third quarter of the 19th century.

This item was brought into the Antiques Roadshow on BBC TV in the UK in February 2011 and was slightly misidentified and undervalued by the "expert", but we ran an article on it in the Bead Society of GB journal this time last year and our Native American specialist put everything into perspective for us!

You'd enjoy the journals - we have lots of colour articles about all kinds of beads

Cheers
Carole