On the trail of Ancient Beads

Do you ever dream of what it must have been like to live way back in history?

I just finished a book that was set in the time of the Black Death in England,
the 'Pestilence' arrived on the shores of England 1348 and claimed between 30 and 50% of the population. Not a particularly pleasant time to dream of revisiting, yet the book has sparked my imagination.


One of the chapters dealt with a glassblower who had come to England from Venice before the Venetian glass workers were herded off to Murano to keep their secrets safe. It was interesting to read and imagine how this art was achieved all those centuries ago.

[caption id="attachment_1300" align="alignnone" width="424" caption="View of Venice, engraving by Bolognino Zaltieri, 1565, with hand colouring"][/caption]

I'm again thinking of ancient beads and how it might be fun to try and reproduce some of them.

[caption id="attachment_1297" align="alignnone" width="425" caption="Ancient Beads"][/caption]

The web is such a great place to do research, but it can be a bit overwhelming at times with so many links, lots of which lead to pages that no longer exist. If anyone's also researching ancient glass beads and want's to share info I'd love to hear from you! I'm currently looking for pictures of the kinds of 'lamps' that originated the term lampworking.
In the meantime here are a few interesting links that are working at the time of writing this!

• History of Murano Glass


• Anglo Saxon and Viking Glass


• Celtic Glass


• Roman Glass on Wikipedia


• Rare Iron Age Glass Bead


• The Ancient World - Beads - Glass and other materials

Wouldn't it be fun to travel back and watch them being made?

If anyone is interested the book I read was Company of Liars by Karen Maitland.