African Trade Beads- How to Identify and Understand Them .

Welcome everyone to Finds of Yesterday. I'm Lynn and today I got in these necklaces. They all came in about the same time and they're all very interesting and I thought I would just share a little bit of information with you about them. Does anybody know what these are? Well let's take a look. All right so this first one up here we'll start with along with these two. These three are We are actually all very similar. If you're thinking that these are trade beads, you're right. A lot of times these are from Venice or from Africa, from Ghana. We just need to take a little bit closer look and make some determinations on how they were made and where they were made. Now, I am not an expert on this at all, but I've learned a couple things over the years and through some books that I got that I'll show you. And I thought we'd just look at some of the details of these. So this one is a really good example of powdered glass. Everybody thinks that these are clay. All of these are glass, and if you look closely, they do look like clay, but they kind of have more of a glossy surface to them. Even though you think they look matte, I'll show you later as we jump on the computer, we'll see that this This one is a little bit more glossy. See the sheen that some of these have compared to a ceramic or clay bead. These are kind of a bicone shape and sometimes these are made in two pieces and then they are fired a second time to meld them together. But I believe this particular one was made by putting it in a clay mold. So they'll crush glass and make a fine powder with it and then they pour them into the clay molds and then they fire it in the kiln. So it does give this off this like grainy texture when it is fired in the kiln in the clay molds like that. And they're all different shapes. You can tell they're handmade and they will take different rods of color and different pieces and they all All have unique designs to them. For the different areas that they're made, they a lot of times will do different colors, different shapes and patterns in them. And these particular ones, yellow is popular in Ghana. So the closest I could find to this one in this book, which I love these books, these books are by Picard. The Picard, I guess it's a couple, but this one right here Looks like about the closest I could find to the shape and the three color, even though it's different colors in the middle. I can't find that exact bead, so it's really hard to make determinations because there's so many varieties. This is an awesome book. Let me show you the first page here. It's Chevron and Nueva Cádiz beads, and it says beads from the West African trade. It's loaded with beads, but this is one book and then I have several others of theirs. I got every volume after that and I think they're coming out with a Czech bead one hopefully soon because I'd love to see that one. And these are loaded with all different shapes and colors of And then I also have this one which is very interesting. It gives a little more depth of different various things, different style of beads. So these are really good books to put in your collection of books for references. And then I'll show you this one a little bit later here. So going back over here we have this style and you can see that this was used in this other Other necklace as well. And if you look at the holes, you can tell that they were fired in a kiln because they're bigger. And see how they have kind of like a little powdery residue. That's the glass slowly chipping away just from just from living life. You know, we all chip away a little at a time, but it still has kind of a glossy look to it. It's showing you it's glass. And it's all usually on cotton string. It's pretty common. Never finished very well. But sometimes I think they've been restrung. Like this one has a nicer end on it. I think this one's been restrung. But yeah this is some little glass spacer beads. But for this little of a bead it's got a really big hole. A lot of times that's because they when they put them in the kiln If they're not fired in a clay mold they're usually put on a rod and then the rod melts in the kiln and the beads just fall off is the way I understand it. All right so then we have another here's one bead in the middle here and these are I believe these are Venetian because they're just glossier your typical Murano style bead but they're made for the African trade. So they were sold to Africa to use for trading purposes and this one is, I love this, it's stunning. These beads are just absolutely stunning. They normally call these Moretti because there's Moretti company out of Venice or Murano that started this company I think in the early 1900s and they do lots of different styles. Let's take a look at the book. You can see These are just very similar to the ones, all the different variations of just this one bead on these two pages. But they determine if they are, they distinguish between them by the layers. So you look at the white was on the inside, right by the hole. And then there was a blue strip after that, and another white, red, white, and blue. So there's one, two, three, four, five, six layers to this bead. And some beads have the white striping showing a little more on the on the outside middle. Like this one here, the white goes in a little bit more. Every bead is slightly different. This one kind of has a haze of the white going through it. Some of these are more solid blue with a little bit of striping on that side. They're all just slightly different. Oh this one's got a lot of white showing. So every time. They make these, they just come out a little bit different. So anyway, this is a really pretty piece, in my opinion. Now, some of them are really readily available, so the prices aren't going to be real high. Like, I believe this one's probably not going to be of high value, but if you find a really rare one, which I couldn't tell you how to... figure out if it's rare or not. If it's not in the book, that doesn't necessarily mean it's rare. It's just, it's a guessing game in my opinion. It is a very detailed market, but I usually just, I'm happy if I got these at a reasonable price to sell it to a collector that might want it to add it to their collection for say $70, $60 to $90 approximately. That's about what I usually sell This one I've had up a couple days already and I can't remember the price I put on it, but you know they just they just sell for lots of different prices based off of the rarity. This one with the one center bead and all these small beads, this is really a spacer bead necklace. I don't know why they put all these spacer beads together, but they did, but they're really still cool. Look at all the different colors and stripes and variations of patterns. I think they're just so interesting because I love beads. So that's just what I wanted to show you. Let's hop over to the computer and I'll show you the difference between clay beads and glass beads. Okay I put this document together to show you up close the beads so you can see the the difference in these. So the trade beads on the left are more of a gray color. You can see that they are actually ceramic clay made and they could actually cut into them and they form these designs. That way, as compared to the ones on the right, which the colors are all made into the bead, so you'll see the variation of color, but that was all different layers of glass. melded together and then fired in a kiln and that's how the color looks. On this one they cut into the actual bead and the under color comes through. So they're both kind of chalky looking. They both have pits that really is similar in a way but the ones on the right We'll be a little bit more glossy. in real life than the ones on the left. The left ones look more chalky and powdery. Here's a couple more examples of clay ones. You'll see like a full necklace here with the the carvings in them as well as the ones that are more terracotta looking. And then here's a full beaded necklace on the right that is all glass. Them are Venetian. And they made these from the 1500s to early 1900s, but you'll still see them being made today, but these look like older ones. The ones on the left have been around for a very, very, very long time. So again, you're going to see more natural earth tones on the clay beads, where you'll get more vibrant colors on the glass beads. And a lot of times they used your primary colors like yellow, blue, red, green, and they also did black and white ones too in the glass. And they called these, they were either millefiori designs, which means a thousand flowers. or stripes or they even did eye beads like the ones we were looking at earlier it was more of an eye bead and the ones on the left the clay ones they either painted or carved them and their weight is lighter actually lighter than the glass and the glass ones will have more of a dense feel The clay ones can get chipped easily because they're more powdery and they do crumble and they won't have sharp edges, where if the glass ones chip, they might have some sharp edges, but they do show some pitting and weathering over time. So that's where you get the look of the clay when you're looking at these glass ones. It's the pitting on the glass. just from use and from them being handled and carried around so hopefully this helped and you can deter make a determination if you find some really old beads that's pretty cool uh you probably don't see as many of the ones on the left as you do on the right, I run across the ones on the right quite a bit and like I showed you today The differences in some of them, if these beads were actually used in trade, then you can call them trade beads, but we really don't know. On eBay, a lot of people use the term loosely, but some of the newer ones you'll see that are still being made today, the millefiori ones, they're going to be cleaner, more smoother. They're not going to have as much pitting and stuff in them as the older ones do. So again, hopefully this helps and you can share this video with somebody that you know is interested in these and maybe it can help them. But like and subscribe and we'll see you on the next one. Thanks for joining me.