More information on Ancient Beads

I just discovered The Bead Site, that has some wonderful information and images if you are researching ancient beads. I'm primarily interested in glass one's so these pages caught my eye -

• Ancient European Glass Beads


• The Venetian Bead Story Part 1 and Part 2


• Beads of Bohemia

There's much more to see and read there.  The problem I'm finding in researching online is broken links and that's what bothers me about creating links here, I'd hate to think any of these pages would disappear taking a valuable collection of information with it.



[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="171" caption="La Tène eye bead. (No provenience) About 3 cm long. National Museum, Prague "][/caption]

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.

World's Largest Blown Christmas Ornament

Found while surfing - The Joska company in Bodenmais, Germany has created the World's largest blown glass ornament, seen here being held by Franz Paternoska.





I hope they've got a reaaallllly big tree!
Meanwhile in Venice it's not looking like a white Christmas -


I also read yesterday that this is probably going to be the first completely white Christmas for Canada since 1971 - meaning we have snow coverage from coast to coast - just to prove it, here's an image from NOOA -

[caption id="attachment_1222" align="alignnone" width="425" caption="It's going to be a White Christmas for Canadians!"][/caption]

Historical Glass

I read a post on Watch Me Create this morning that included some great links for anyone interested in ancient glass.

My memory was jogged and I remembered I had this image of a bead on my computer that I took from The Museum of Bristol's website some time ago.



I am so in awe of things that were acheived in the past (not just beads), when people had so much less in the way of equipment and past knowledge than we do.  This bead was likely created with the use of a complicated cane, the precision in the dots is just amazing!

Look at this bottle from 9th Century BC Egypt -



taken from the Virtual Egyptian Museum.  Isn't it beautiful!  If you click the link to the museum you'll find that it didn't originally have the wonderful lustre that it does now, that is something that has happened over time.

This rare cup from the same site is even older!!



How wonderful it would be to travel back and see these craftsmen and artists at work!

The interesting thing about the Virtual Egyptian Museum is that they explain the techniques that would have been used to create each of these pieces.  Be sure to take a look at their bead collection!!



Examples like this from the Roman period are making me think I want to revisit dot beads!  I haven't made any for a while and I think it is time.  What fun it would be to try and recreate some of these early beads.

Here is a really interesting link on how Romans would construct their glass canes. romanglassmakers.co.uk , and here is part two

I've just spent over an hour reading and exploring this site and can't say enough about how interesting it is!  Go visit Roman Glass Makers!! You'll learn everything from how the Romans made window glass, to the canes, to blown vessels, blown vessels made with molds and everything in between.  Is it me, or do these guys have the best job in the world?  Combining archaelogy, history and glass all in one place!

There is nothing like admiring other people's work and art to get you inspired to go and create some of your own!

End of Day Glass at Bristol Blue

I was born in Bristol, England which is the home of Bristol Blue Glass - if you haven't heard of it you can visit their site here .

One of my pieces of Bristol Blue, this little paperweight celebrates Bristol and two other things it is know for - The Suspension Bridge and Condorde.

I love the colour of this glass, it's so deep and rich, this colour comes from cobalt and the use of lead crystal. Bristol Blue have an interesting history of this glass and glass in general here.

One of the things I would like to do in my art is to include some of my heritage. Since Bristol is also the home of Harvey's Bristol Cream sherry that comes in blue glass bottles I think it would be fun to recycle some Harvey's bottles into beads. This made me wonder if they are in fact made of true Bristol Blue glass - the more I've learned the more I realise that this is highly unlikely and that they are some other formulation. Now I realise what a silly question I asked the folks at Bristol Blue! Their glass is of such a high quality it would not be used for sherry bottles!

Searching their site led me to a new item they have - End of Day Glass - somehow it has a nostalgic & romantic ring to the name and I wanted to know more. Here's their description of End of Day Glass -

During breaks or at the end of the workday, glassblowers were generally allowed to fashion leftover molten glass into items for personal use. They created both utilitarian and decorative pieces that were entirely separate from the limited repertory of production work. These offhand objects, considered examples of Folk Art in glass, have been called whimsies or end-of-the-day glass, suggesting that they were frivolous or have only incidental significance. Although these terms do sound demeaning, "Folk Art illustrates the basic urge of the human spirit to create objects of beauty".

Further research on the web led me to this document that is talking about Nailsea Glass - another Bristol area glass-type.

One of the items that were made back then were glass walking sticks. These were traditionally hung in the house, as it was believed that they attracted germs. By cleaning them down daily, disease would be prevented. It was apparently bad luck to break one.

As you can see this document has some rather nice pictures of 19th century glass and is quite interesting. Here is their description of End of Day Glass -

It seems that some works encouraged the blowers and/or apprentices to try their hands to improve their skills with the metal left in the pots, if it was not sufficient to make a production piece.

Newman, p.125-126, defines them as, “A glass object, of various forms, made by a glassmaker in his own time and for his amusement and home decoration or for sale by him. They were usually made from the molten glass remaining in the POT at the end of the day, considered as the workman’s perquisite. In some regions, they were made on Saturdays when the glasshouse was not working, and on Sunday each factory group paraded with its accomplishments (e.g. from Stourbridge to Wolverhampton), stopping at each public house en route to have the pieces voted on, and the most popular received a prize and the assurance of factory production ...”

I have to say that the Sunday parades sound like a lot of fun!