The Venerable BEADS

Just how old are beads and beading?

The title of this post is not as bad a play on words as you might at first think. Beads have been venerated for millennia.

Beads are known to have been made about  40,000 years ago, In 2004, Francesco d’Errico of  CNRS UMR (the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Unité Mixte de Recherche) in  France. found an amount  of shell beads at Blombos Cave in South Africa .  These were then dated and found to have been made roughly 75,000 years ago. They not only had holes drilled in them but also had marks caused by wear from being threaded on a string, More recent discoveries suggest that beads were being made from shells approximately 100,000 years ago. It’s fair to say that beading is not a new hobby but it is certainly getting more and more popular again,

tiny shells may be worlds oldest beads/

Beads have been used all over the world for adorning clothes, for praying, for counting, as jewellery, as charms and talismans and even as a form of money for trading.

Egyptian Faience Beads

The ancient Egyptians were believed to be making beads from faience as early as 5000 BC. When we refer to Faience these days, we are generally talking about glazed earthenware which takes it’s name from a town in Italy named Faenza, where a tin-glazed ceramics were made in many factories. The ancient Egyptian Faience however was more like an early type of glass from pulverised quartz or sand and mixed with sodium other chemicals to produce different colours. This was then heated (fired) which bought out the colours of the pigments. Once it has been fired the faience developed a very hard glazed surface. The British Museum has a net made of  turquoise Faience beads on a linen thread. These nets were commonly used as the final wrapping for a mummy of a wealthy person.

The history of beads is a large and fascinating subject which I hope to cover in later posts. Today beads are growing in popularity again and being used for many things such as charms, bracelets necklaces, earrings, decorating clothing and bags, prayer beads, worry beads.. The list goes on.