Thanks for the pics. I am looking forward to John's comments on these rare beads.

The three "chevron" beads from left to right have 9, and 8 and 10 points respectively.
The left one has in the white blue white layer ten points under the nine point outer design. The left and middle beads were rounded hot which is shown by how the outer layer of the inset canes remains intact at smaller diameter but is ground through at main diameter. The color layers white in particular appear to be somewhat granular. The last layer on all three seem very coarsely formed, not tightly like a star mold would make and lastly they all show serious bubbles at the ground end and the bubbles are spherical, not a bit elongated which would be consistent with pulled cane.
I would think that if these were pulled it was minimally, i.e. a short hand built cane and that the individual beads in the case of the left two were shaped hot slightly before cooling and grinding.
Very curious beads indeed! I could see these things having come from the hand of a very clever lamp worker. Time frame? your guess is as good as mine.........

... "a very clever lampworker." Someone of an experimental frame of mind!

The red, blue, green and black beads seem unusual to me, also. I've asked the seller to provide any clues she knows of as to history. Let's hope she just didn't pick it out of a basket at a jumble sale. She's on the Isle of Man.

Looks as if there's at least one other large "chevron" missing?

The cut copper beads that appear to be missing to the left of the middle "chevron" are actually inside the bead - one of the glass pearls broke, and the hole of the large bead is filled with the wax, trapping the metal beads inside.

The smallest blue bead gives a tip as to how these beads were decorated - tiny strips of color, that were then feathered up and down by a point?

I like the viridian green festoons and forget-me-not pattern on the red bead.

The ends of these beads appear worn, not deliberately polished - the red bead is oxidized, or just plain dirty? The interior, as revealed by the flattened ends, is brighter.

And after getting out an LED penlight and my loupe, the black glass might possibly be the inkiest blue imaginable - if I get the angle just right, occasionally I can see a cobalt edge to some of the white trailings. The glass is completely opaque, no light gets through it. It looks BLACK.

Art's analysis seems pretty acute - rounded bubble holes on the end instead of tubes, also rounded bubble holes on the side. Constructed as a single bead, not a cane.

That might explain why they're all different, despite - on account of the glass colors - having been made by the same person or workshop?

I positioned the red bead next to the pistachio "chevron" to contrast the two green colors. Not such a great photo, but you probably get the idea.

Very interesting beads, I have not seen anything like these before,
They look to me to be some type of simulated chevrons with compound cane used as stripes.

In the middle bead the inner star seems to be partially erased which would involve some lamp work.

I wonder if the inner star pattern of the two other beads has the same or an uneven number of points on both sides of the beads. The uneven number of points is a particularity of a few old Venetian simulated chevrons.
Somebody has been creative here.
I would not be surprised if they came from India or Indonesia.
JP

I wondered about India, but the use of glass pearls and cut metal beads seems to indicate an earlier stringing than when the India and Indonesian lampwork workshops got going. Somewhere I read that the Czechs introduced lampworking into India in the 1940s, and of course the Indonesian industry that's producing the jatim and other beads is comparatively recent.

The white beads with the blue and pink festoons are in nearly pristine condition, but are certainly Venetian - one even contains a typical trailed-carbon flaw. The sample cards upon which these festoon beads appear date from the late 19th century into the 1920s, yes?

Wax pearls have been out of production for nearly a century, I think.

So maybe someone found Grandma's old beads and made a flapper necklace in the 1920s?

The necklace beads have been on the thread long enough for the copper beads to corrode to the thread - don't know how quickly that can happen, but in a damp saltwater climate like the Pacific Northwest where I live, it takes years, even if the metal is outside. Stored inside, judging from stuff I've had corrode, it can take decades. And, of course, the cord is broken and beads have evidently been lost from the original stringing - that seems more likely the cord rotted.

I suppose I could burn some of the stringing cord to see if it can be drawn out like nylon? It's old-looking and limp, certainly not like the modern fishing cords I've used.

I'll get out the loupe and camera and take a better look at those little central rosettes, because they certainly seem to match your analysis. Further bulletins tomorrow, probably.

Thanks, JP!

JP -

The pistachio green has 11 interior star points; the white-blue-white star in the one red bead has 10 points. The other white star seems to have 11, but it's really distorted. Maybe it has 12. Maybe it has 10.

These interior stars look molded, not lampworked, as they match on both sides of the beads, and the points rotate in the same direction of deformation. Also, many of the points are very sharp.

Then the larger exterior stars with the canes set between the points:
pistachio 10 points;
largest red bead with the pistachio canes has 9 points that match on both sides of the bead - e.g., the one "blunt" point is in the exact same spot on the opposite side;
medium red bead with the blue canes has 8 points.

So it seems some sort of molding went on with these beads, as I don't see how a lampworker making "melon" bead ridges could accomplish the sharp points, which, like the exterior canes, seem to extend through the beads instead of being surface decorations. Rolling over a flat mold with sharp corrugations, perhaps, instead of using a star mold?

Then the ends and sides of the oval or cylindrical beads were ground to create the pattern? The two red beads have beveled edges, so that seems to indicate they originally had smaller ends.

The beads are grimy, I'm itching to take a toothbrush to them...any objections?

I am not a bead maker but in my view they are individually made beads, using a mold to start and then finished by lampwork using canes.
There is a good chance that they are each unique artwork.
From the picture I cannot count the inner star points on the top bead and on the larger red/white/blue. I count 10 points or do I miss something?
Quite an amalgam of beads in this necklace, only the two "festoon" and the millefiori seem to be Venetian to me.
It would help to have Art and Jamey's opinion.
JP

Sigh. I reversed the numbers in my post - Pistachio interior star is 11 points; interior stars on red beads are 10 points for the white-blue-white star, 11 for the white star (these points are really messed up and difficult to count, but I can discern at least 11 little red points within the white overlay).

Looking through your book, JP, I found one pistachio-cored chevron, number 680, which, by odd coincidence, also has 11 points on the interior star.

The thin layers of white-blue-white following the red core also seems to be an unusual combination.

So, yeah, most likely one-off prototypes or experiments?

# 680 in the chevron book is from the Van Der Sleen collection acquired in Venice in the late 1950s. it has also a green core and 11 points but is a different bead cut and ground from a drawn Venetian cane, not one of a kind. Yours look to me like a mixture of drawn and lampwork from somebody experiencing bead making.
The 11 points has always intrigued me because one of the great collector in Venice Mr DeCarlo told me while discussing this topic "11 point that's IMPOSSIBLE"- they have to have 12, 10 or 14".
However there are two of them in the Van Der Sleen collection and of course there were quite a few of them found later made in India.
Here is a link showing the ones from Van Der Sleen
JP

Thanks, JP.

Decided that what makes the little lampwork beads look so un-Venetian is that they're made without filigrana. And no pink. Just opaque black (inky blue), brick red, viridian green, white, with little dots on blue/white and yellow on the forget-me-not bead. The translucent green and blue beads and their wispy decorations are definitely different.

The green fried egg one makes me smile.

A lot of skill but no expensive glass to work with?

"Quite an amalgam of beads in this necklace, only the two "festoon" and the millefiori seem to be Venetian to me." -JP

That matches my impression,too - and you've encountered such a vast number of Venetian beads, it would be presumptuous to doubt your intuition on this one.

The little forget-me-not pattern on the red bead is so very European, a recurring theme, especially on Czech (formerly Bohemia) lampwork, I wonder if they could be from there.

The deep blue glass on the "black" beads is not typically Venetian, either.

And the wispy feathered trail decorations just don't seem to be part of the standard Venetian repertoire.

These are very small beads, by the way, indicating deftness and skill on the part of the lampworker. So that seems to let out the comparatively casual lampwork done by British maker of lacemaker's spangles, for instance.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Vintage-Glass-Beads-Necklace-Green-Black-Made-France-/320614784590#ht_6210wt_1026

OK, that's it for me, I can't stand thinking about these a minute further.

A couple of years ago there was a discussion about a French jewelry company who made many of their own beads. The clasp shown in the ebay necklace listing is one of theirs. I thought it was the Rousselot company, but I might have mispelled it. I can't seem to find info online or in BCN search.

here's more info-

Here is a very informative series of posts, where Carole Morris shows examples.

It's helpful to exploit the Google image search -
"Rousselet beads site beadcollector.net"
This brought an image to the thread I was looking for right to the top. Read all the followups.

The blue bead also seems to have either a gop of white release clay stuck onto the end, or a rogue piece of the white glass. Parallel polish marks on the end of this bead.

More non-elongated bubbles on a "chevron."

This looks like fly-fishing line to me. But then, I'm not a fly fisherman.

Nylon lines began to replace silk and linen lines after World War II. All those parachute cord companies had to turn their machines to something, I guess.

So a materials analysis of the stringing line might actually be useful. Guess I could burn some and see what results...I hate destructive tests, tho.

The carbon flaw on the one made me wonder if it was in fact made over an old kerosene torch. As anyone who's ever had to use a kerosene lamp knows, the flame smokes at the slightest disturbance.

my grandmother in UK had a small collection of loose Venetian beads that were all different,(they ended up with me as a child and started me off on my enduring interest!) and i conjecture that either they all came off a sample card, or she picked out some unusual little decorative treasures when they had a holiday in Venice at some time, perhaps even on their honeymoon in 1899. the tiny faceted metals may have been french or from Birmingham? she also had wax-filled pearly beads.
we can assume that the stringing hasnt been tampered with, otherwise it would be much neater.
this type of design- individual interesting beads spaced out with sections of small beads, and a length long enough not to need a clasp is typical of around 1900+ and i have a pattern/instructions for something similar in "The Little Girl's Sewing book" by Flora Klickman, published at that time, which was my aunt's as a child.
So the chevrons may indeed have been one-off experiments. however, my first thought when i saw them was could they have been the middle sections of ovals (like on the old liberty necklaces) that had the pointy ends completely ground away??

just to clarify- my grandmothers beads were a somewhat similar assortment but not strung.

Thanks Stefany, we seem to be on the same wavelength.

Based upon the colors of the glass (no cadmium or selenium in evidence) these seem to be late 19th century beads, and the stringing style just seems so much like what someone would do with granny's beads. The copper steel-cuts may have been chosen because the holes in these beads are large - there are two tiny silver-lined transparent seed beads, but the braided line through them is a tight fit.

Given the stringer's preference for symmetry, one or more large "chevrons" might be missing from the assemblage, as well as smaller beads that mate with the olive millefiori and small green bead.

Women wore this type of necklace right through the 1920s, didn't they? Swingy long lengths and anything that looked primitive or exotic was fashionable, from what I've read and seen. Until the Depression hit and ruined all the fun...

"hoped that you would know all about them as they are a mistery to me.(I am not a bead expert) All I can tell you is that I have had them for at least 40 years. They were in a box of Georgian cut steel jewellery that I bought at auction in Hertfordshire but where they came from I don't know. Also in the box was a srange string of hand made glazed pottery beads & some old Venetian millifiores. None of the other jewllery was later than the early 19C. Sorry to be of so little help. Please let me know if you find out anything about them."