Sunday, January 25, 2015

Phoenician Glass Bead Necklace








This necklace is composed of 10 store bought metal beads, and 19 glass beads.

It is heavily based on several Phoenician beads and necklaces I've found on museum websites, such as Corning's Glass Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the British Museum, or on Christie's auction website.

Inspiration Bead
Inspiration Face Bead

Inspiration Necklace 1
Inspiration Necklace 2
Inspiration Necklace 3
Inspiration Necklace 4

Note: Some of the museum websites indicate that the necklaces may have been recomposed at a later date, so it is not known if a necklace of this configuration would have been worn. One of the auction websites notes that their necklace contains modern metal beads, while another notes that the metal beads are several centuries newer than the glass beads on the necklace. However, while the necklace configuration may not be able to be documented, the glass beads themselves are easily documented using the first two links above.

Research Note on Face Beads
Face Beads started to be made in the 7th century BC, when according to Glenn Markoe in Phoenicians (p. 156-7), "demon masks, animals, and male and female heads began to appear. It's probably more correct to call these figures pendants, rather than beads, as Markoe notes that they were often found on necklaces as special talismans (perhaps these are another variant of "evil eye" beads, as are the stacked dots beads on the necklace above).  Markoe says that these beads were likely made at multiple workshops along the Phoenician coast, in areas such as Cyprus, the Egyptian Delta, and Carthage. The pendants started small (3cm) but later grew up to 8 cm in height. These beads traveled widely and have been found  throughout the Mediterranean, and in Russian and Europe

Markoe says that these beads were "rod formed," but I think the larger of these beads were more likely to have been core formed. Corning's Glass museum specifically notes that one of these beads was made using this technique. Core forming is a process where small dried balls of clay, dung, and straw were wrapped around a mandrel. The bead was made on that "core" and the core cleaned out once the bead cooled. This results in a hollow bead. It is also easier to make larger beads using core forming, as less glass is required due to the large core.

A previous post of mine on Phoenician beads which includes a reproduction of another variety of Phoenician face beads.

Sunday, January 18, 2015

Early Medieval Irish Glass Beads (& beads imported into Ireland)


Source: An Examination of Glass Beads from Early Medieval Ireland, by Margaret Mannion

Note: This picture is showing my own glass beads that I recreated using information found in the source referenced above. The goal of this project was for me to learn more about early period Irish beads, and to attempt to recreate these beads and understand the bead typology which was developed and created by the author of the above source (updated 10/20/15).

Sunday, January 11, 2015

Viking Necklace

This necklace was made for a friend. She has a viking persona, so she needed a necklace.

My inspiration was the necklace that can be found at this link .

The original colors I wanted were coral and green, which would have more closely matched the necklace above, but the coral effetre 104 COE glass is problematic . It tends to turn grey unless treated a specific way in the flame, something called striking, which I can not do with the torch I have. So we added in yellow and orange instead of the coral, and things got much easier from there on.

This necklaces is mostly made from monochrome beads, just like the example I linked to above. I added in a few different types of polychrome bead designs, and those designs can be documented very easily using Johan Callmer's book "Trade Beads and Bead Trade in Scandinavia."

I tried to keep the organization of the beads on the necklace feeling somewhat random, just like the the viking necklace I used as inspiration. I did this by creating a variety of colors, and shapes in the beads, and also by stringing them onto the necklace in a random pattern.

There are approximately 180 beads in this necklace!

Making this necklace was a useful experience because I had the chance to practice making very simple beads, and it became much easier and faster for me to make these beads over time and after all this practice. I even learned  how to make more than one bead on a mandrel at a time.

Close up view of a few of the beads.

Beads broken out into piles by type


Final Necklace. Glass beads (made by me) with store bought amber beads and an amber Thor's hammer.

The necklace I used as inspiration was not all made from glass. In the future I might try to mix glass beads I make with store bought stone beads to more closely match what was done with some period necklaces.