Bead string made for Bruni in heraldic colors (red/white/black)
The necklace was inspired by the string of beads pictured below. The picture is from Birte Brugmannn's Glass Beads from Early Anglo-Saxon Graves. The necklace contains both glass and amber beads, and they come from a Grave in Germany (Issendorf Grave 3549.1). The beads are included in Brugmann's book because a few of the type of polychrome beads shown in this picture (the beads labeled 1) were also found in England.
The beads labeled 1 in the picture are called Candy beads by Brugmann. They are a common early type of Continental bead (5th century). They are characterized by their translucent base (green, yellow, or blue-green) and opaque decoration (mostly in white or red). I have used black as the transparent color, because many of the beads in the picture below are dark enough to look black. I tried to include in the necklace I created one of each polychrome design found the picture below.. I also included ribbed and annular/barrel shaped beads in my necklace, as the historic necklace also has a few types of these beads. I put in a few bicone beads, because Bruni made necklace out of Bicone beads that she entered into this winters K&Q's A&S. I also played around with the colors to include more white in the necklace, and I made my designs much more symmetrical than the string below to fit with modern tastes.
