In nearly 400 color photos the beauty and widespread use of beads is explored. Ranging from antiquity to the modern time, Phoenician, Celtic, Viking, Venetian, African, Bavarian, Bohemian, Dutch, French, and Russian styles are presented along with the fascinating evolution of the beadmaking industry. Their varied uses as symbols, in fashion, and more controversial matters are explored. A price guide is included.

This uniquely designed book and kit with a detachable plexiglass spine contains nearly 2,000 colorful beads and instructions to make a variety of jewelry items while learning about African culture. 100 illustrations.

Features biographical sketches and the work of glass bead artists. Illustrates lampworking techniques.

They’re the very best in contemporary glass beadmaking, 1000 dazzling and unique examples by an international array of artists. This color survey has it all: the beads come single or in multiples, in jewelry or sculptural pieces, flameworked and kilnformed; and their diversity and beauty are amazing. Julia Skop’s intriguing Secret Surprise showcases clear glass beads with millefiori slices at the ends. Bruce St. John crafts his beads out of diachroic glass, then fuses and coldworks them at the lapidary well after completion. Nebula Black Necklace, from Rene Roberts, features an organic-looking focal bead adorned with fine metal leaf, glass shards, and a subtle dot decoration. An artist’s comment and detail image accompany many of the photos. A Selection of the Crafters Choice Book Club.

Glass beads, both beautiful and portable, have been produced and traded globally for thousands of years. Modern archaeologists study these artifacts through sophisticated methods that analyze the glass composition, a process which can be utilized to trace bead usage through time and across regions. This book publishes open-access compositional data obtained from laser ablation – inductively coupled plasma – mass spectrometry, from a single analytical laboratory, providing a uniquely comparative data set. The geographic range includes studies of beads produced in Europe and traded widely across North America and beads from South and Southeast Asia traded around the Indian Ocean and beyond. The contributors provide new insight on the timing of interregional interactions, technologies of bead production and patterns of trade and exchange, using glass beads as a window to the past. This volume will be a key reference for glass researchers, archaeologists, and any scholars interested in material culture and exchange; it provides a wide range of case studies in the investigation and interpretation of glass bead composition, production and exchange since ancient times.

This is the first dedicated and comprehensive study of glass beads from Early Medieval Ireland, presenting the first national classification, typology, dating, symbology and social performance of glass beads.