- Large yellow powderglass bead with concentric diamond design to imitate old Bodom beads, 31mm diameter with approximately 3mm hole. Vintage 1970s
- The design on this bead is particularly crisp considering that it was achieved by carefully layering small quantities of pulverized brown and green glass between yellow layers in a clay mold.
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The name Bodom has been widely, but incorrectly, applied to large, usually yellow, powderglass beads for decades. The term Bodom actually applies only to beads belonging to the Queen Mother of the Ashanti, which have not been seen recently, but are thought to include old genuine old powderglass beads as well as gold beads and large trade European and Islamic trade beads. Jamey Allen is promoting “old powderglass beads” as an alternate term. The Krobo word for large focal beads, including, but not limited to powderglass, is “kpo.” Here we are dealing with relatively new, 1970s to present, powderglass beads that imitate, or are inspired by, old "Bodom" beads so I’m just sticking with powderglass
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Old Bodom bead can easily be distinguished from newer ones because the design was created by trailing molten glass over the surface of a powderglass bead., In the newer beads inpsired by Bodom, the design is baked into molded beads as layers of different colored pulverized glass, which often results in blurry or smudged designs. The pattern on this one is remarkably crisp and undistorted