The photos which I intended to add to the original post, but got tangled up somehow, so here they are.

Neat composition with the other white-based decorated beads strands!

I was thinking of stringing them with some Russian blues, just by way of contrast. Further bulletins as events warrant, I guess.

The four bead mates with cobalt blue bow ties are smaller, about 9x11 or 10x12mm.

One bead turned up with a stringer of opal blue with a black edge. Carbon from flame smoke? Any lampworkers have a guess?

Check out page 21 of the card images on the BCN articles page link to the Picard's early 20th century Conterie cards. I assume these are from the Societa Veneziana per l'Industria dell Conterie (Venetian Society for the Glass Bead Industry) but I don't know if they had specific dates indicated anywhere. The Societa was founded in 1899.

In Middle Eastern and Venetian Glass Beads, by Panini, the version of the bead with the plain blue bow tie is shown on p. 200, and attributed to the first half of the 19th century and Dubin's The History of Beads (1988) is the reference.

By golly, there it is, number 15444. Thanks, Rosanna!

It seems to be of the opal blue bowtie variety?

After sorting through my pile of 300+ beads, I found about 30 that - as far as I can tell - match this bead and are in comparatively nice shape. Match criteria would be 1)thicker dark green stripe + 2) neatly made opal blue bowties.

Maybe 35 matching beads that are in OK shape.

I didn't count the matches on the strand of about 50 very worn beads that I culled from the pile, or the dozen or so crizzled bowties, but many might meet the above two match criteria. (pic attached)

At first I thought the beads with the plain dark sapphire blue bowties seemed to be in better shape, overall, but after re-examining them, I'm not really convinced of that. There are fewer of them, compared to beads with the opal blue cane.

I didn't see any pictures of these in Dubin, so am not sure what the basis of Panini's cite is, other than they're Venetian beads and the timeline for decorated lamp beads starts in early-mid 19th century, so they got lumped in with that group.

Here's a pic of some of the OK-condition sapphire blue bowties, of which there were fewer, overall (about 60 out of 300).

I don't mean to keep flogging this subject, but in my obsessive sort through my pile of these beads I found one that is unique for its 1)black and green stripe, 2) nearly perfect condition.

The ends have not been ground down, and the wound glass looks like swirled whipped cream. What appears to be a chip is not, but a dimple left by the lampworker. The gap in the green stripe is not due to a chip - it's original.

The bead is in such good shape, although I don't think it's of recent manufacture, that I wondered if it had been pulled from a sample card or something. Or maybe it was just rattling around in a drawer somewhere instead of being worn.

At any rate, I thought it interesting to see what these beads might have looked like when they were brand new.

Your bead with the two-tone stripe is on one of the Sick Collection cards, #1230.

There's a sequence of a dozen variations of this design, #1229-1240. (The blue-and-white twisted cane for the bows shows up in #1239)

Using the DVD that accompanies The Bead Goes On book.

these are the only ones I have found in these colors, they are on the way to the Lopacki residence

I bought a few of these last week from Laguna Bead Shop.

In my rummage through the Sick Collection CD last night, I found this bead with its cylindrical shape and red bow, albeit with what looks like a gold or light brown stripe, as item 19034, which dates it to the 1950s, apparently.

My 3 red bow-tie beads from Laguna Bead Shop arrived, and in person they're even more different from older blue bow-ties than suspected.

1) They're somewhat bigger than average
2) The uniform cylindrical shape makes me wonder if they were marvered by rolling in one of those molds Czech lampworkers use.
3) The glass textures and colors are noticeably different as well. They look like they were made yesterday.

Not Venetian at all? Made in a Christmas theme?