Strand of amber color antique Venetian trade beads, most about 14x10mm
33-inch strand with 52 beads, almost all in excellent condition
For those who have only seen trade beads strands that have come out of Africa in the past 20 years or so it may be hard to imagine the quality of those I bought 30-50 years ago.
Any beads that I still have as strands would have been near perfect, with no, or very very few chipped or broken beads. I usually rejected strands that had more than one broken bead, but sometimes, if it was a hard to find pattern that I really wanted, I would buy a strand with a few broken beads, but immediately take it apart, keeping the good ones and setting the bad ones aside to be salvaged, if possible by grinding or cutting.
When I measured this strand I also noticed that it's quite long. It reminded me that the standard length of trade bead strands when I started buying them in Abidjan in 1972 was the distance required to loop a strand from a dealer's thumb to his elbow - about 32-36 inches. Just as package sizes in the supermarket have shrunk over time, so have trade bead strands, now they're sometimes less than 24 inches long.
Choosing a selection results in a full page refresh.
Press the space key then arrow keys to make a selection.
