The history of beads – 20 fascinating facts!

Published: by Boundless Beads

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We tend to think of decorative jewellery as a relatively recent phenomenon. In fact, archaeological evidence suggests that early humans may have created and worn beaded jewellery up to 75,000 years ago, making it one of the world’s oldest expressions of individuality and status.

Did you know?

1. Two beads made from ostrich eggshell were discovered by archaeologists in Tanzania in 2004, and are thought to be around 70,000 years old. They are believed to be the world’s earliest known beaded jewellery.
2. The discovery of beads of this age is significant because they provide evidence that early homo sapiens were capable of ‘symbolic thinking’. Whether for trade, or to demonstrate status or identity, archaeologists believe these early beads had little to do with survival.
3. The earliest known European beads date from around 38,000 BC, and were discovered at La Quina in France. The beads – made from grooved animal teeth and bones – were probably worn as pendants, and represent a time when homo sapiens were replacing Neanderthals and living more complex lives.
4. As homo sapiens evolved, the implementation of farming and the accumulation of material possessions acted as stimuli to trade. An unprecedented level of craftsmanship developed, including weaving, pottery and bead-making in various forms.
5. As long-distance trading grew, it encouraged the exchange of culturally significant artefacts. Beads became a popular commodity due to the ease with which they could be carried. Agate, serpentine, Sinai turquoise and cowrie shells from the Mediterranean, as well as coral and carnelian, were some of the first beads traded and have been discovered at archaeological sites throughout the Middle East.
6. From around 6,000 BC, beads and their raw materials became an increasingly significant ‘currency’. Lapis lazuli beads – which were mined 1,500 miles away in Afghanistan – were of great importance to the Sumerians of southern Mesopotamia. Often, it was the raw materials that were traded, with the beads themselves fashioned locally to fulfil cultural need.
7. During the Bronze Age, Greek traders from Mycenae established strong trade links with less advanced cultures around the Baltic. Copper and bronze was exchanged for amber, with was then fashioned into beads. The Greek traders also passed on cultural knowledge and expertise which helped the Baltic communities to advance.
8. The first known glass-type beads were Egyptian faience beads which were made from clay, but had a thin lustrous glass-type (vitreous) coating. From about 5,000 – 2,000 years ago (a period of remarkable stability in Egypt), Egyptian bead-makers often worked under the patronage of kings or priests. They used sophisticated techniques and an incredible variety of precious materials to create stunning beaded jewellery which was worn as an expression of status and hierarchy.
9. More complex glass beads, such as mosaic or ‘millefiori’ beads, were developed in Mesopotamia about 3,500 years ago. Further refined by the Syrians and Egyptians, these sophisticated beads were traded as far north as Scandinavia. As these empires fell, the expert bead-workers – whether by their own volition or by force – would relocate, taking their skills and secrets with them.
10. The Romans, who had a love of coloured translucent glass, created sophisticated new kilns to produce more liquid-type glass. They developed glass drawing and glass blowing techniques, and drew on the knowledge of their best bead-workers, many of whom hailed from the eastern provinces. They traded large numbers of glass beads (in a myriad of colours and sizes). Roman beads have been found as far east as China and Korea, as well as north to Scandinavia, and south to Mali and Ethiopia, these beads were traded through new and existing trading routes often passing through many different cultures.
11. Often, the Romans traded beads for profit with less technologically-advanced cultures. They also traded beads in exchange for local resources, such as Whitby Jet and Baltic Amber, which were available at the extremes of the Roman Empire.
12. As the production capacity of the Roman glass manufactures increased, beads were no longer produced for just the elite, but for the general public too, although the bead quality was often poorer.
13. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, so the glass-making expertise dispersed and regional bead styles evolved. Previously settled tribes began to migrate, taking highly-sophisticated bead jewellery with them as a portable form of wealth.
14. European glass bead production diminished during the medieval period, apart from in small pockets of France, Italy and Germany, where imported soda used in the glass production process, was replaced with potash lime made from local wood ash.
15. By the early fifteenth century, Venice became the glass and bead making centre of Europe, (lesser centres also existed in Holland, Bohemia and Moravia) due largely to tribal conquests in the Middle East ending 3,000 years of bead production. There is speculation that after the Ottomans captured Constantinople in 1453, many of the glass makers there moved to Venice, taking their secrets with them.
16. Venetian glass bead production was concentrated on the island of Murano (which was by now the world’s dominant bead production centre) to protect the city from fire risk from the kilns, and to safeguard the production secrets of the glass workers.
17. In 1797, Venice fell to Napoleon. Many of the city’s bead and glassworkers were taken to France where their secret production techniques were uncovered. This allowed for the growth of new European bead production centres in the Czech Republic and Holland.
18. From about 1750, beads from the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic became a viable alternative to Venetian beads. As the Venetian bead empire faltered, so the Bohemians began to develop unique production techniques, which – from about 1737 – included the cutting of glass on water powered cutting wheels. Two distinct forms of ‘Kristallerie’ cutting evolved; ‘Kugeln’ (globe) cutting which used a vertical cutting wheel to produce a concave cut, and ‘Englisch-Schliff’(English Cut) horizontal wheels which produced a flat cut. By 1829 there were 152 specialist cutting workshops in Gablonz (Jablonec nad Nisou) alone, as well as more than a thousand local ‘cottage’ producers.
19. The world famous Daniel Swarovski was born into a glass cutting family in northern Bohemia in 1862. In 1883, Swarovski attended the ‘First Electricity Exhibition’ in Vienna, which inspired him to improve methods of cutting and faceting glass beads. In 1892, Swarovski patented the first electric glass cutting machine, leading to the birth of the mechanised production of crystal glass.
20. Following the end of the Second World War, the sudden expulsion of the ‘Sudeten German’ element of Bohemia (some three million people), brought an end to many of the region’s famous glass and jewellery making dynasties. Under a new communist Russian regime, an alternative Bohemian glass bead culture – fuelled by creative Czech artists – began to grow and still exists today. For many years, the state run export house Jablonex, controlled a large portion of Bohemia’s glass industry. In 2009, the region’s core glass production business passed to the Preciosa Group, who continue to uphold the traditions of Czech glass production, and whose beads are still, to this day, primarily made from drawn glass rods

About Boundless Beads

Established in 1992, we are a UK-based, family-run business. We supply exquisite artisan beads and beautiful hand-crafted jewellery elements to the hobbyist market and to wholesale partners throughout the UK and globally.We are privileged to work closely with some of the industry’s best glassworkers and bead-makers, many of whom hail from the world-renowned Bohemian dynasties of the Czech Republic. Many of the beads we sell are entirely unique to our collections and can be found no-where else in the marketplace.

The History of

Trade Beads
by
O. Ned Eddins

Uses by permission

October 12, 1492, Columbus recorded in his logbook the natives of San Salvador Island were given red caps and glass beads. This is the earliest written record of glass beads in the Americas. The Spanish explorer Hernando Cortéz landed on the coast of Mexico in the spring of 1519. His ships carried glass beads along with other European trade goods. The Spanish explorers Narváez in 1527 and De Soto in 1539 carried glass beads for trade with the native inhabitants of Florida.

NUEVA  CADIZ BEADS:

Nueva Cadiz beads were made between 1500 and 1560 A.D. and were associated with Hernando DeSoto and Panfilo de Narvaez.

In 1622, a glass factory was built near Jamestown, Virginia. Less than a year later, a raiding party of Indians burned the factory. Very few of the beads made in the Jamestown factory are believed to exist today.

Glass Beads - Brass Beads - Dentalium Shells

Early Spanish Conquistadors and Priests traveled from the Florida Keys to California. In 1741, the Russians reached the coast of Alaska and from there down the western coast of North America. A North West Company trader, Alexander Mackenzie, crossed Canada to the Pacific Ocean in 1793. All of these explorers, as well as David Thompson and the Lewis and Clark Expedition, carried glass beads for presents and as a medium of exchange in dealing with the American Indians.

LEWIS AND CLARK BEADS:

The Lewis and Clark expedition carried thirty-three pounds of small trade beads.  There is no evidence they carried the bead pictured to the right, but these beads are known as Lewis and Clark beads.  There are several entries in the various journals kept by the expedition members about how hard it was to trade for food with any of the beads they carried, except the plain and blue and white ones.

Bead prices varied with location, demand, and how bad Indians wanted a particular bead. When trading for beaver pelts, the Hudson's Bay Company used a standard value based on made beaver...a made beaver was stretched, dried, and ready for shipment. Records from early trading posts show a made beaver was worth: six Hudson's Bay beads; three light blue Padre (Crow) beads; two larger transparent blue beads.

Little historical information is available on the majority of trade beads discovered in archeological sites. The Hudson's Bay Company has celebrated over three hundred years in North America, but the records on types and descriptions of trade beads, along with invoices, and sources of supply have not survived in the Hudson's Bay archives. Today the company's only examples of the Hudson's Bay beads are in the Indian Arts and Crafts section of their museums.

Early Bead History:

The history of beads dates as far back as 40,000 years ago and have been made by every culture since then. Egyptians were making glass beads by 1365 B.C., and several thousand-year old glass factories in Lebanon are still in production. Evidence China has been making and exporting glass beads for centuries has been revealed in archaeology sites. Glass and Brass beads are found in burial sites of many cultures: Egyptian tombs, Roman catacombs, Saxon, African, and American Indian.

The above string of beads are made from mastodon bone.  There is no indication that the beads were made at the time of the animal's death.

Prior to European contact, beads in North America were made from  gold, jade, bone, the blue-green turquoise, and hand polished shell beads. Anasazi, Fremont, and other Southwestern Pueblo people traded turquoise throughout the Southwest and into Mesoamerica. Indians from the Pacific coast traded sea shells to the Southwest Indians; Indians from the Atlantic coast and the gulf of Mexico traded beads to the Mound Builders of the Mississippi River valleys.

VENETIAN TRADE BEADS:

A major source of glass beads used in the fur trade was Venice, Italy. Venetians held a near monopoly on the bead industry for nearly 600 years. A guild of Venetian glass makers existed in 1224 A. D.. Around 1291, a large portion of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano, an island north of Venice; city fathers feared an accident with one of the glass furnaces could destroy the city.

A variety of Venetian glass beads used in trade with American Indians

For over two hundred years, beads were made in Murano by a method known as "winding." With this method, beads were made individually by drawing a molten glob of glass out of the furnace and winding it around an iron rod. Glass of another color could then be added, or the bead could be decorated with a design. Coloring agents were added to the molten glass: cobalt made blue; copper produced green; tin made a milky white; and gold resulted in red. Wound beads from a master glassmaker were so perfect it was hard to find a seam where the different molten glasses merged.

Another method was blown glass beads. Using this method, a glob of molten glass was removed from the furnace and the desired shape obtained by blowing through a glass tube—much the same way glass vases are made.

The glass industry was able to keep up with demand using these two methods until the mid- to late 1400’s. Once European countries started sending ships around the world, ship captains and explorers carried beads made of glass, porcelain, and metal to use as gifts, or for the fur trade. The slow method of winding beads could not keep up with this new demand.

Around 1490, Venetians started to make beads from tubes of drawn glass; Egyptians may have used this process centuries before. With this procedure, a master glassmaker took a glob of molten glass from the furnace and formed a cylinder. After working the cylinder into the desired shape, he attached a rod to the cylinder. An assistant took the end of the rod and run down a long corridor before the glass cooled. The drawn glass tube was about one hundred and twenty meters long. The length of the tube and the amount of glass used determined the size of the beads. Once the tubes cooled, they were cut into meter long pieces. These pieces were cut into beads of various sizes. The cut beads were placed in a large metal drum containing lime, carbonate, sand, carbon, and water. While the metal drum turned, heat was applied to the outside causing the rough-cut edges to be smoothed. After the beads were smooth, they were cleaned and then placed in a sack of fermented bran and vigorously shaken to polish them. The monochrome glass beads of today are not much different from those made five hundred years ago.

By the 1500’s, the demand for glass beads reached the point Venetians were sending drawn glass tubes to Bohemia. There the glass tubes were broken into beads, polished, and sent back to Venice. The Bohemians (Czechoslovakia) had been making glassware, vases, and cups since the twelfth century.

BOHEMIAN BEADS:

With an abundance of willing workers, quartz for the silicon base of glass, and potash from wood-burning furnaces, Bohemia sent men to work in the glass factories of Murano. The knowledge these men brought back on how to make the drawn glass tubes turned Bohemia into a major producer of glass beads.  By the mid-eighteen hundreds, Bohemia was producing more glass beads than the factories in Murano.

Blue beads from Bohemia with French Brass trade beads.  The large bead to the right is a Dutch glass bead dating to 1650.

China was also a source of glass trade beads. Studies by Peter Francis, Jr., Director of the Center for Bead Research, has shown beads from China were brought to Mexico with the Spanish galleon trade. This trade route linked Chinese ports with Manila and Acapulco, and from there to the rest of the Spanish Empire in the Americas. Russians acquired Chinese beads from trading post on the Mongolian border and transported them to Alaska. A few Chinese glass beads have been found along with Venetian beads on Colonial Spanish 17th century sites…one of America's top archaeologist, David Hurst Thomas excavated over 62,000 beads from St. Catherine, the northern most Spanish mission on the Atlantic coast.

These are Bohemian Blue beads with French brass trade beads, but they include a Chinese coin, a clear indication of contact with Chinese trade.  The large blue bead at the top is a Dutch glass bead dating to 1650.  The interior string consists of blue faceted trade beads strung with Dentalium shell beads.  Dentalium shell was highly prized among Native Americans, especially the longer shells.

PADRE, DOGON, CROW, AND PONY BEADS:

Padre beads are wound, opaque, light blue glass beads from China. These beads come in three sizes: jumbo (Dogons) 5/8's to 3/4 inch in diameter, mid-sized (Crow beads) 3/8's inch in diameter, and small Pony beads 3/16's inch diameter. Through Spanish and Russian traders, Padre beads spread rapidly into the Southwest and Northwest. In 1778, English explorer, Captain James Cook made several references to the effect it was difficult to obtain supplies and furs from the Pacific coast Indians without this particular blue bead. Captain Lewis had this to say about Padre beads and the Indians tribes along the Columbia River…only the blue and white beads were acceptable, the most desired, are the common cheap, blue beads called "Chief Beads"…. Padre beads were made in a variety of colors, but blue and white were the most sought after by the Northwest Indians.

This string of jumbo Padre "Chief" Beads was a gift from Julie Birrer of Jackson Wyoming. The beads original came from the Nez Perce in the late 1700s. The Nez Perce referred to these beads as Sky-Blue beads.

CHEVRON BEADS

The aristocrats of the glass beads are the Chevron or Rosetta. They are also called Rosary or Star beads. The word "bead" is derived from the old English word "bedu" meaning prayer. These Paternoster beads are multi-layered and corrugated to produce a star pattern on the ends which often result in stripes on the outside. The original Chevron bead had seven layers. This hand-faceted bead was difficult to make, and in order to meet the demand, variations were made with as few as four layers. These new variations were tumbled instead of being hand-faceted to speed-up the process. The most common Chevrons are the blue, red, and white combination. Green and white (referred to as "water melon" beads) , or red and white, Chevrons are rare. Father DeSmet carried these beads in his work with the Plains and Northwest Indian tribes, but there is no evidence Chevron beads were used during the Indian fur trade period as a trade item.

Chevron beads - Courtesy of Mike Albanese

Although found in small percentages as late as 1640, Chevron beads are abundant only in sites earlier than 1600.

VASALINE or CAVE AGATE BEADS:

Another trade bead was the Vasaline, or Cave Agate. These beads range in a variety of colors. This pressed bead was faceted and transparent.  On the earliest Vasaline beads, the hole through the bead is larger on one end;  the hole was made with a hot pointed rod. Vasaline beads were widely traded until the mid-1800. After the mid-eighteen hundreds, Indians women requested the smaller seed beads.

RUSSIAN BLUE BEADS:
Russians had little to do with the Russian Blue beads. Produced in Bohemia, the Russian Blue bead did not appear in Alaska until just before Americans bought Alaska (1867). Russians traders acquired these beads from the American and English traders in exchange for furs. The Russian Blue beads are shaped into six-, seven-, or eight-sided tube before being drawn. After the tubes are cut to bead size, the ends of the ridge between the adjacent sides are ground off. The result is a bead with eighteen, twenty-one, or twenty-four facets. Some deviations resulted in more or less facets.

CORNALINE d' ALEPPO or HUDSON'S BAY BEADS:
In the mid-1800’s, the "Cornaline d'Aleppo" beads became known as the Hudson's Bay bead. This bead has two distinct colors of glass, one color over the other. The outer layer was red and the inner layer a translucent green. The more recent version of the Hudson's Bay bead has a yellow or white center of opaque glass with the outside having a translucent or opaque red glass. This later version can be found in tubular, ovate, and spherical shapes and in a wide range of sizes.

These are Corneline d' Aleppo beads strung with simple white beads, ca. A.D. 1670 to 1760.

MILK GLASS TRADE BEADS:

For more recycled glass landscape rocksinformation, please contact us. We will provide professional answers.

These are Milk Glass trade beads found in North Carolina.  Historical data is difficult to obtain on many types of trade beads recovered from archaeological contexts.

RATTLESNAKE BEADS:

Rattlesnake beads get their name from the hand painted design along the outside of the bead.  These beads are still produced today as bead art.

FEATHER BEADS

These beads get their name from their feather-like design.  They were produced as part of the African bead market.

DUTCH "PILLOW TICK" BEADS:

These Dutch "pillow tick" beads were traded by the French in the western Great Lakes area between 1670 and 1760.  The "pillow tick" name is derived from their design.

ENGLISH COLORED GLASS TRADE BEADS:

These beads were traded by the English in the area of Hiwassee Island, Tennessee.

HUBBELL BEADS:

The last known bead made for Native American trade was the Hubbell bead. This bead was supposedly made for Lorenzo Hubbell owner of the Hubbell Trading Post in Gavado, Arizona.  First made in Czechoslovakia between 1915 and 1920, this bead is still being made today. The Hubbell bead came in a variety of sizes, shapes, and shades to imitate a semi-precious stone...Turquoise. Records at the Hubble trading post do not support any connection with this bead.

MIX AND MATCH:

While some beads were strung using the same bead type throughout, more often beads were mixed with other bead types or beads of natural materials to form the final string.  This is a classic example of mixing choices of various beads that were gathered over time.  The string includes Bohemian blue beads, French brass beads (1870), green Chevron or "Water Mellon" beads, a brass ring, bear tooth, bone disc bead, Chinese Padre beads, Red Venetian beads (1840), snapping turtle claws,  Milky Glass beads, and parts of a medicine bag.

Seed Beads:

Seed beads like those used on this deer skin bag reached the plains Indians in the mid-1840s.  The use of stringed beads waned as Indian women began to use seed beads in the creation of designs.

Bear Paw Bag - Jeannie Harrison

The primary beads used by Indian women for decoration were the seed, Pony, and Crow beads. Made of drawn glass: the seed beads were under 2.0 mm; Pony, or pound beads, were between 2 and 4 mm; Crow bead were 4 to 10 mm in diameter. The larger Crow and Pony beads were carried by Lewis and Clark and other early explorers. Crow and Pony beads were hung  from, or attached to clothing and horse gear. There is no evidence of seed beads being taken to the Mountain Man Rendezvous during the period 1825 to 1840.

Seed beads can range between 1 and 3mm in diameter.

The Osceola Garter on display at the Alabama Department of Archives and History in Montgomery, Alabama

Prior to the introduction of seed beads, porcupine quill work was used in decoration by the Plains Indian women. Developed by the North American Plains Indians, quill work followed the introduction of horses. After acquiring horses, Plains Indian did not have to range over larger territories in search of game. Being able to spend more time in one place allowed women time to quill. Each tribe had its own patterns and traditions associated with the quill work.  The advent of seed beads allowed for an expanding expression of design, especially among tribes of the Western plains.  Below are just a few of those designs.

Thes shirt and arm strip designs are Ogallala Sioux (top and center) and Apache (bottom).

These floral designs are Ojibwa and Ute.

These are Ute, Sioux, and Cheyenne head band designs.

This wonderfully beaded saddle was brought to one of our artifact ID days at the Etowah Mound complex.  The designs suggest that it belonged a Crow Indian.

My thanks to Joan K. Murray, Corporate Historian, Hbc Heritage Services for updated information on Hudson's Bay seed beads. In 1987, the Hudson’s Bay Company sold its Northern Stores Division to the North West Company. The successor to the Hudson's Bay Company in Northern Canada still sells beads to Native Americans. The new North West Company stocks over forty colors of seed beads.

This strip of seed beads belonged to Carrie Bagley. Her daughters Helen Yeaman and Betty Frome gave it to me.

Indian Horse Bandolier

This thirty-five inch bandolier went around a horse's neck. While on his way to the Columbia River and Fort Astoria in 1811, Wilson Price Hunt mentioned a similar decoration on a Cheyenne Indian horse's neck. This pre-1885 Crow bandolier has on it: Crow beads, vasaline beads, French brass beads, white hearts, Mescal seeds, sea shells, Abalone shells, Dentalium shells, Dutch dogans, watermelon beads, hawk bells, thimbles, buttons, rifle shell casing, bullets, deer dew claws, and a pieces of an American flag.

WAMPUM:

Native Americans along the eastern coast had their own beads. These beads were made from the "quahog" or hard-shell clam. The hard-clam furnished two colors of Wampum—white and purple. Only a small portion of the shell could be used to make the purple bead, resulting in its value being twice the value of the white bead.

With the introduction of metal tools to drill and work the clamshell, the beads became more uniform, about one-fourth inch in length and one-eighth inch in diameter. The Dutch and English colonists established factories to speed up the production of Wampum, thus becoming one of the earliest industries in America. John Campbell and his descendants in New Jersey made the bulk of wampum beads traded in this country. Quahog-shells were also sent to Europe to be made into Wampum and then returned to the colonies.

Wampum beads were widely used for trade, but were not considered a form of money. These beads were used for personal decoration, and when arranged on a string in a particular color pattern to convey messages between various tribes.  Wampum woven belts were often used in ratifying treaties. The arrangement of colors becomes the treaty document. There are records of court judgments and tuition in some of the early American colleges as being payable in Wampum. Beads of the quahog shell remained a medium of trade exchange until 1792, when the United States government established coinage laws bringing into use the first silver dollars and ten dollar gold pieces. Glass beads eventually replaced Wampum as a means of ornamentation.

MANHATTAN BEADS:

Many history books claim the Dutch bought Manhattan for twenty-four dollars worth of trade beads. This story first appeared in Martha Lamb's book on New York history in 1877, which was two hundred and fifty years after the purchase. Since her book was published, most historians have quoted it. Manhattan was purchased with trade goods, but there is no evidence trade beads were more than a small part of the exchanged items. - Peter Francis, Jr. Bead Research Center.

The Indian Trade Bead article was written by O. Ned Eddins of Afton, Wyoming. Permission is given for material from this site to be used for school research papers.

References:
Wind River Rendezvous, St. Stephans Indian Mission Foundation, St. Stephans, WY. 

Arizona Highways, July 1971. 

Bead Research Center -  Chinese Glass Beads: A Review of the Evidence by Peter Francis, Jr., Director of the Center for Bead Research. To reach this internet site, type into Google search-  the bead site - and it comes up as Index-2, otherwise you are asked for name and password.

Native American Beadwork - Large Bibliography of Native American Beadwork. Mindy Callaway, Graduate School of Library and Information Science, University of Texas at Austin.

www.kstrom.net/isk/art/beads/art_bead.html - History Culture Values of Beads

www.sicc.sk.ca/saskindian/a97jun20.htm - History Of Indian Beads

www.hbcheritage.ca - HBC Heritage Services is a good source of information on the Hudson's Bay Company.

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