These beautiful beads have all been made during the last ten years.

I have been to Java and Bali many times by myself, as well as with Jamey Allen and with Jim Lankton—just so that we could study these wonderful beads. And I think it is strange that they are not easy to sell for the prices they deserve. In fact, they are not even selling on eBay for little more than the asking price in Bali.

And Jamey feels that many may fall apart soon because they have not been properly annealed. But those which survive should be properly regarded someday. Enjoy them now; they are nearly as good as mosaic glass gets, I feel.

i agree that by stigmatising so many beads as "Fakes" we shun them although if they were named something like "museum quality replicas" they might be recognised better for the undoubted hand/skills that have been developed and refined in order to produce them.

Thanks for the response... at least we're agreed that they come from Java and not Italy ;-)

Who's making them and why can't I see more ot them around with 2mm long lizards and well designed faces??? Perhaps they are fakes but... they were acquired around 30 years back (it seems) and some have archeological patina (it seems)...

Hmmm

well... ya see now.... um.... errr...

you don't say YOU have owned them yourself for 30 years.

Sounds like a tall tale... from the telling of it... stories are only stories. Stories sell beads.

Fred, did you and Jamie ever track down the bead maker(s)? Is it known who they are? I think they are worthy beads, worthy enough to buy a few at reasonable prices. They are very interesting if nothing else.

http://www.beadbrothers.nl/N_frame.html?http://www.beadbrothers.nl/

Follow the links to

Nieuwe produkten | Antieke kralen Indonesie

John Diepeveen of beadbrothers.nl says he's involved with copy bead production and can recognize "his" beads because of obvious flaws like mixing patterns and designs that were never used together in the old beads.

I've also been to Bali and know some of the sellers of new Java beads. We've talked about them and posted many pictures of them in this forum.

Fred talked about problems with the beads falling apart because they are not properly annealed. I've lost beads that we brought back from Bali both from dropping them and from crumbling apart. I know we've tested after-the-fact annealing of poorly annealed beads from China. Bringing them up to temperature and allowing them to cool cool in a controlled annealing kiln we were able to remove the stress lines visible in clear beads under polarized light.

Has anyone tried to "improve" recent Java beads this way? Has it worked?

Exploiting the Google image search engine is a great way to access past discussions here on bcn. It's bigger and more powerful than the search on our own software, at least for going back just 2 years or so. Thomas mentioned this some time back.

When you get to the image display, click on your choice of image and you will arrive at the bcn post with the image. Once there, you will see "Where am I?" in the upper right corner - click on that and you will be at the discussion thread it's in.

The most relevant images in the Google search will of course be at the top of the Google image page, with relevancy decreasing as you go down the page.

Regarding the new Jatim beads - my friend Glenn, born and raised on East Java, brought the first new Jatim I ever saw, in 2004 or 2005. I have no idea exactly when they were first produced. The first batch I got from him were rather unstable. Some of them crumbled just sitting in bags. The next batch a couple of years later were much more stable.

At the Tucson shows last year (2011) we saw very fancy versions for the first time. Made with mosaic patterns, intricate and vibrant in ways they were never made originally. The earlier repros made efforts at close imitation of the old style - and some are hard to discern.

https://www.google.com/search?hl=en&gs_mss=jatim+beads+site&tok=ltpCHS-MitWdzqXME6JqTw&cp=34&gs_id=1z9&xhr=t&q=jatim+beads+site+beadcollector.net&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&biw=1067&bih=574&um=1&ie=UTF-8&tbm=isch&source=og&sa=N&tab=wi&ei=Mw-5T5rkBoaziQLiubWHBw

Very good tip Joyce. I've long been frustrated with the site search. The google results are very good, except for not being able to X the sidebar.

Wandering around the search you linked I found this topic featuring David's photography and Abdul's beads in 2009. I sure do love David's photos. Maybe some day I'll learn how he softens the shadows so well. Is it daylight or artificial light? The depth of field is excellent... a good camera and good light is needed for that.

Okie dokie, I was sent back because the site tells me the URL is too long... yep, the google mega URLs won't 'fit' the Link URL field. So here it is in the text field.
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.beadcollector.net/openforum/uploads/356_nl_yellowjatim.jpg&imgrefurl=http://beadcollector.net/cgi-bin/anyboard.cgi%3Ffvp%3D/openforum/%26cmd%3Dget%26cG%3D6353938323%26zu%3D3635393230%26v%3D2%26gV%3D0%26p%3D&usg=__r6V0JJuA2MWHf3GVrl6RXPNx18g=&h=864&w=704&sz=72&hl=en&start=5&sig2=MPV1YtfWo7uE8cOCTmdh7g&zoom=1&tbnid=c2qkJZ1S3tuVxM:&tbnh=145&tbnw=118&ei=JRW5T7WyOuOTiALD9ZDNBg&um=1&itbs=1

...that day was when Abdul told me that James Lewis had passed away. Forumites will remember the Lewis auctions the next year - James was a customer of our favorite African traders for over 20 years.

It was one of the last times Abdul made it to our area - times have changed since, and now he has a wholesale office in China where he is a major wholesaler of material from Africa. Great guy! He was just here in the states on a whirlwind trip to California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, New York, D.C., Arizona. He has since been back to China and when I heard from him last week, he was in Nigeria.

The big fat Jatim I'm holding in this image (with Abdul that day) is probably the biggest genuine ancient Jatim I've ever held.

that Jamey bought from Singaraja (spelling?) Imports at Rodeway Tucson 2011. And new jatim versions from nk27 and tasmania_gal. A nice visual study of ancient vs. new.

Fence post finials?

Door knobs?