Grave 50 Portway Andover

Below is a picture of a bead string (grave 50) from the  Portway Andover excavation report.  This is the third bead string I have recreated from that report, and I completed this project for the Artifacts of a Life event at the end of September.

Historic Glass Beads

This bead string, (which is interpreted as a bracelet) had 25 glass beads, 4 amber beads (which I recreated in amber colored glass), one fragmentary metal bead (which I did not replicate), and two Roman coins (small copper colored store bought medallions were used as a substitute).

My recreation

Thoughts on my recreation process

None of the beads on this string were very advanced, so technically, this was a relatively easy bead string for me to recreate. Any difficulties I had in recreating this bead string came about because some of the beads had uneven shapes or mistakes in their design, which I tried to replicate this time around as exactly as I could manage.

Replicating beads with specific mistakes actually takes me a good bit more time than replicating perfect beads of the same design, because I have to observe the historic bead a bit more closely to figure out how to make the same mistake found on the historic bead. It also takes the same amount of technical skill to replicate a specific mistake on a bead.

If I was talking with a newer bead maker who was interested in reproducing this bead string, I would encourage that person to attempt to make the beads as best they could, and not to worry about replicating a specific mistake. But, if they did make a mistake on a bead, I would tell that person to keep those beads with mistakes in the final project. In that way, I think a bead string would come to have the "feel" of the original, with its combination of beads with imperfections, and more perfectly executed beads.

Mistake Beads

To the right are examples of my "mistake" beads, beads which did not make it into the final bracelet. In most cases, this I rejected these beads because they did not match the extant necklace well enough, not because my overall technique was poor. I'll likely keep at least a few of these beads  to be given away later.  Some of the reasons these beads were rejected include
--wrong color: I was trying to mix my own transparent light brown for one of the beads, and it came out too dark
--wrong shape: I didn't notice that the documentation provided a better view of the bead until after I created it.
--wrong size: I made the bead a bit too big the first time
--wrong decoration pattern:  I included one too many or too few waves on a few of the beads, either by accident, or because I did not look closely enough at the historic bead the first time. In one case, I was also trying to replicate a bead with a very sloppy decorative technique, and gave it a few tries to see which one looked most like the period bead.
--large air bubbles in the bead: This is the one actual technique "mistake" that I made during this recreation project. I trapped several large air bubbles in one of the beads. This is a problem, because air bubbles increase the risk of bead breakage.