Rosanna, these are really neat! If I have seen these before, I don't remember. And, though we've discussed aja at length in years past, I don't know if it was ever truly settled (please let us know if you remember a verdict!) - whether it was concluded that they were reheated and "squashed" in Italy, or in Africa. I remember that Kabba believed it was done in Italy. And I once heard from someone who said he was a Yoruba priest, and that the correct spelling surely must have been "eja", meaning "fish eye", not "aja", which I believe he said meant "dog eye". Now, give me some slack here, this was in the earliest days of the forum, more than a decade ago........I tried to inform, and used "eja" in my auctions for a long time thereafter, but the "market name" had already been well established and there was no changing the spelling.
I could believe that the heat-treatment was done by someone with better technology for glass working than the Africans would have had - flat plates, ability to apply uniform heat & pressure, knowledge of slow cooling to avoid cracking the beads, etc.
To get two beads lined up and fused together nicely, as these are, would have taken a bit of effort. To keep the two holes lined up, I think a mold with pins to hold the beads would have to be used.
Another speculation - that someone saw the Africans re-working some beads in this manner, but crudely, and brought the information back to the bead makers in Europe, who saw a way to "upscale" some of the drawn beads that maybe were not selling as well as they'd like.
