A BRIEF HISTORY OF BEADS

The word “bead” is derived from the Anglo-Saxon bede meaning "prayer." The first known beads, made of teeth and shells, were found in a French cave in which the earliest Homo Sapiens lived 38,000 years ago. The earliest forms of glass beads were found in Egyptian royal graves of the 21st century B.C. Cultural anthropologists believe that in ancient times beads served as talismans, seeds of "sacred" knowledge, and sources of curative power.

Global trade networks emerged midway through the second millennium and energized the European glass industry as beads quickly became an exchange medium for materials such as North American beaver pelts, Indonesian spices, and African gold and ivory. The earliest European glass bead-making centers were in Venice, Holland, and the northern Bohemian region of the present Czech Republic.

Among Venetian glassmakers on the nearby island of Murano, where glass-making dates back to the eighth century, the innovative beadmaking techniques were treated as a zealously guarded "state" secrets for more than a thousand years.

One of the secrets was “the drawn-glass method” in which a hollow globe of molten glass was attached to two metal plates with rods, and two men, each holding one of the rods, ran quickly in opposite directions, drawing out a tube of glass at least 300 feet long. The original bubble of air remained as a tunnel running the entire length. The tube was cooled and then cut into canes, and the canes were cut into beads. The beads were faceted and finished using equally secretive reheating, grinding, hand-cutting, and polishing techniques.

CZECH BEADS AND BUTTONS | SWAROVSKI AUSTRIAN CRYSTALS