By Sandra J. Paluzzi
The Bead Peddler®

I was aimlessly flipping through bead books looking for a subject to inspire me.  I sat there poring over a photo layout of beads created from 30,000 BC. to the present.   

The beads made their procession through time.  The earliest beads were made of shell and bone.  Eventually they were joined by stone beads - turquoise, lapis, and alabaster.  The metals then entered the march - gold followed by silver.  I paused for awhile at the Egyptian display - one of my favorite looks.  Then I moved onto the Greek ceramic and the first glass beads - all made centuries before Christ was born. As time progressed so did the various images people were able to create with the glass.  When Christ was born, people were using glass to imitate stone. 

As the centuries passed by, people discovered more ways to work glass.  Each new glass method was quickly used for beadmaking.   The wound beads were followed by the famous drawn Chevron beads that the Italians used for trade to West Africa.  As machinery was invested so were beads.   The humble seed beads and pony beads were a result of machinery.  As cultures overtook other cultures their influence was seen in the beadwork.  I personally liked the geometric patterns of the  Mongolian influence in Tibetan beads.  

As we approached today, the pictures in the history book became more sketchy.  But I was able to fill them in with pictures from my own head: the wonderful crystal in the 1940s, the fun plastics of the 1950s-1970s through today's dichroics.

But wait a minute:  dichroic is not the only bead material available to us today.   Historically, only one type of bead was available to a society at a time.  You could look at a bead and know something about the culture.  Not so today.  We have access to absolutely every type of bead ever made.

The shell bead pictured from 30,000 BC is inexpensive today.  My favorite look from the past, the Egyptian look, is in my wardrobe.  I have a dzi bead made into a hatpin by a friend.  I have chevrons, clays, bones, woods, metals, stones, and glass of every size, shape and color.  I have beads that have been drawn, wound, lampworked, pressed, blown and sculpted.  In a word, today we can have it all.  We can present an Earthy, ethnic look one day and a glitzy, 40s glamorous look another.  We can be sweet and innocent or hot and sexy - all with a little help from our beads.  No wonder I never get tired of looking at beads.  Whenever I think I'm getting jaded, I just scoop up another handful or another book and am again blown away by the variety available.