The Tucson Gem Show

Rare Vaseline Beads made in Czechoslovakia

A couple of weeks ago I was in Tucson, Arizona for the annual bead and gem show.  This was only my second time.  It is a huge event for Tucson--in fact the biggest event of the year.  Actually, there are 42 different shows going on during the two week period.  Obviously a person can't attend them all.  I went to five, and it was too much to see and process.  Vendors come from all over the world, and it is safe to say that it is not just the biggest event in Tucson, but it is the biggest bead/gem show anywhere.  The convention center is filled with hundreds and hundreds of vendors.  Huge tents are set up all over the city; hotel ballrooms are flooded with stalls.  The entire city's hotels are completely booked just with the vendors.  I don't know where the buyers stay!

I try to keep myself under control.  There are only a few things I wanted to look for:  old African trade beads,  Hebron beads, tomato beads, wedding beads, pearls for the cat collars, interesting brass, check out the amber (just look!), check out the lapis and turquoise...

First of all, there were literally tons of pearls. The tents with the fine gems included pearls where a single pearl was valued at thousands of dollars. Strands of large baroque pearls were thousands of dollars.  I eventually found my way to very inexpensive pearl strands that would work fine for my needs.  I love lapis, but all the strands I saw were obviously dyed.  Beware:  most lapis and coral these days is dyed.  I won't use a dyed material, so, no purchases there.  My weakness is, was and ever shall be, African antique beads.

There is a place at the Tucson Gem and Bead show called African Village, and that is a must stop for me.  It is outside, and reminded me of Kofuridua in Ghana.  African traders had piles and piles of  beads for sale--  some cheap, some valuable.  The best way to do it is to walk around for a long time, looking at all the stalls, locating the beads, and prices you want.  In order to get the best prices, you have to choose one vendor, one stall, for your business.  So, the walking around, asking questions, sorting and looking takes a long time; the actual purchasing goes pretty fast (I would say too fast).  And that is what I did.  I found one place that had almost everything I wanted, and chose my beads.

I fashion valuable beads into wearable jewelry.  It is not really a profitable business because jewelry buyers are not necessarily bead collectors.  So while bead collectors (including myself) will spend real money on beads, jewelry buyers don't know or really care about that value.  Knowing this full well, I try not to buy really valuable beads.  However, my eyes strayed and stopped at the aquamarine vaseline beads, the large,antique white and blue Venetian beads, more amber, and old amazonite.  As we sat in the back of the shop and counted up my bill, with discounts on everything, I impulsively added the very expensive strand of vaseline beads.

Vaseline beads are glass beads which were made in Czechoslovaki over a hundred years ago for the African trade.  They came in many colors; red, yellow, green are common. Then there are the opaque vaseline beads.  The aquamarine  opaque strands are collector items, and, I was simply unwilling to leave it behind.

And I still don't regret it.

What is Amazonite?

The other day I was showing a talented jeweler some of my pieces.  I started with the first ethnic necklace I ever bought overseas.  In 1980, I purchased a Bedouin necklace from a Jordanian business man who cleverly learned where all the expatriate women lived, and rang their doorbells to sell his wares.  That first necklace was a double strand; the inside strand having a single pendant of a light blue stone.  At the time, I wondered if it was turquoise.  The only aqua colored stone I knew was turquoise.  But "Shifty" (his apt nickname) told me it was amazonite (accented on the second syllable).  As the years went by I saw more and more amazonite in the Middle East and Africa,  and learned more about it.

old and faded amazonite

It's a type of feldspar, named after the Amazon River.  It's found in the Americas (recently Colorado);and these days, mostly Russia.  However, the amazonite I love the most are those very very ancient beads, recently excavated in Mali.   Ancient Egyptian jewelry often  features lapiz lazuli, amazonite, and gold.  The old beads are irregular in shape and often faded to a light green.

They've traveled far in time and location, and been highly valued all the while.

Bead Collection on a String

  I'm new to the craft show gig, and so I have been working on my booth.  I'm getting there.  Due to the nature of my jewelry, I am aiming for across between a Middle Eastern souk and a museum display. At The Rockland craft show I was immediately aware that my booth was missing a banner.  The banner would be a one-liner describing the essence of my product.
  I'm the first one to acknowledge that my beaded jewelry has a small market.  I'm also the first one to say that I'm not a jewelry maker.  I am two things:  I am a collector and a designer.  One could call the jewelry a bead collection on a string.  Or an  (arguably) artistically arranged bead collection on a string.  Therefore my work will appeal to those people who naturally gravitate towards old, handmade, culturally interesting beads.  I have found that this is an acquired taste, stemming from some experience or knowledge.  Like caviar.  Or like hats which totally defy gravity.  The more you see it/ hear about it, or taste it, the more you embrace it, whatever "it" is.  In Paris I was told that now the "right" way to eat chocolate is to smear olive oil on top of it.
  But I digress, and I don't think my work is as avant garde as an oiled chocolate bar.  But the foreign and exotic beads are more interesting to women who have seen them before, in shops, books, or in their travels.  This is how I finally arrived at my slogan:  "Artful beaded jewelry for interesting women".  It would probably be more accurate to call them interested women, but, interesting serves a purpose. 

"amber", antique red glass bead, hand cut sodalite, Peruvian turquoise, coin silver African bead

  Each necklace, or strung bead collection, has a story to tell, which starts outside this country. For instance, the necklace above is an example.  The piece as a whole has an Indian or Tibetan look because traditional Indian/Tibetan jewelry uses amber, turquoise, lapis lazuli and coral (as does Moroccan!).  However, nothing on this strand is from India.  I bought the "amber" on this necklace from Hudu, a bead seller in Ghana.  Hudu was magnificent to look at because he always wore satin robes and a matching hat whenever he was in selling mode.  He sold me these beads as amber, but I'm sure now that they are fake amber (see earlier blog post, "The lure of amber").  The turuqoise on this necklace is Peruvian turquoise, which is chrysocolla, found in Peru.  The dark blue stones are not lapis, but Peruvian sodalite, hand cut in Peru.  The red beads here are antique red glass beads traded in Africa for many years.  The coin silver beads are authentically African, which I bought from Hider in Ghana.  It's an international bead collection on a string.
 


 

In Search of Yellow Hearts

    In Peru, I collected fancy glass Venetian beads, strung on string, with occasional crosses and shells. They resembled rosaries, but didn’t have any rhythm or order.   Most of the beads were colored, with a feather design.  But some were special; every once in a while there was a solid red one, with a white core.  The white under layer gave a complex hue to the red glass.  They were slightly heavier than the other glass beads.

     Several years later, I received a strand of plain red beads from Sudan.  These were heavy, had yellow cores, and the same rich, dark red glowing color.  I instantly loved them and perused my books to learn more.  They are called Yellow Hearts, or Cornaline d’Aleppo beads.  They are from the early 19^th century, were made in Italy, and traveled to Africa where they were traded.   After those relatively easy acquisitions, I had a harder time finding them. 

      In 2008, on a trip to Ghana, I focused on buying another strand of Yellow Hearts.  Word got out, as it always does, that there was an American lady in town interested in buying beads, and soon enough, Musa, Hudu, Hider, and Paul were ringing the doorbell. Hider came first.  He was a young, soft-spoken Ghanaian, who had a vast collection of beads.  Right away I purchased Dogon glass, agates, and Vaseline beads from him.  Musa, magically and magnetically attracted to the bungalow, came the next evening, overloaded with old Venetians, Mali wedding beads, more old Carnelians, and Hebron beads.  Though I was enchanted with the beads, I never saw one Yellow Heart strand.  I told them all what I was looking for and they shook their heads, “No, there aren’t any here.  They are rare", said Musa.  Hudu came the third night.  He was magnificent:  tall and majestic in his satin robes.  I knew, and he knew I knew, that his visual adornment would raise the price of his beads. But of course it was worth it!  Yet, even Hudu didn’t have the deep red beads I was searching for. 

     A few days before I was to leave I hired a car and drove several hours to Koforidua, the bead market in Ghana.  On the way, I stopped at a bead factory and watched recycled glass, mostly soda bottles, be melted down and formed into the famous recycled glass beads.  In Koforidua I saw hundreds of booths of bead sellers—old beads, glass beads, stone beads, rare and common beads—they all were there.  Well, not all: not one strand of yellow Hearts.

Yellow hearts with sodalite and fossil amber

     Then, two days before I was to return home, gentle Hider knocked at the door and there was a smile on his face.  He opened his satchel, and there was a strand of Yellow (and white) Hearts.  He told me he had gotten on his motorcycle and gone into Niger to get it for me.  I had two thoughts.  The first was that I was astonished that he would travel for days to get the strand for me.  The second was that I was worried that the cost would include his travel expenses.  I hoped  that the price would be affordable.

      It was.  There was a transaction, and we both returned to our homes, satisfied.

Let's talk about amber

Basket of Treasures

I am surrounded by beautiful stones and beads that I have collected while I lived overseas.  As winter in Maine approaches, I feel so lucky to be able to come in the bead room and design some necklace with African yellow hearts from the early 1800's, or Peruvian opals that Julio in Lima sold me as he exclaimed, "Mejor, mejor que antes!" (better than the last ones).  I have a wide assortment of brass and silver,  stone beads and African beads. Actually, while I have collected beads from around the globe, it was amber that I sought.  Below is something I wrote about it:

The Lure of Amber

I first encountered amber in the Middle East.  We were in Jordan in the early eighties, and I was looking at old Bedouin silver jewelry.  The vendor--expats called him Shifty—easily found the houses of expatriates, and rang their doorbells on lazy long afternoons.  Hauling a large bag  brimming of silver jewelry,  copper trays, and Bedouin coffee pots, he trundled into their living rooms, and began unpacking it like an exotic, kaffiua clad Santa Claus..  For us it was free entertainment in our own house.    Shifty picked up a coffee pot—“not one mittel hada (like this) in Jordan” he would chortle proudly.  Well, that was a lie.  There were thousands of those.  Bedouin necklaces were plentiful too; some even had real coral, or amazonite stones.  But once, he held up a necklace with yellow- orange barrels.  “AMBAR: he said in a hushed voice.  “rare rare. Not one mittel hada in Jordan”.   I held it. Amber.  I’d heard of it.  But the price was prohibitive and I had to pass.  However, his voice, the price, and the rarity, gave birth to a new passion  for me.

That was 1980.  Now it is almost 30 years later, and I have collected a lot of amber.  I also know the differences of “amber” and amber, and African amber and Tibetan amber , Baltic amber and Victorian.  Those barrel shaped beads on Shifty’s necklace were not the 50 million year old resin material.  They were Bakelite, though original Bakelite sold in the African trade as amber over a hundred years ago.  African amber it’s called, and it is, in its own right, very valuable and expensive.  Baltic amber is translucent, the real deal, and comes from the Baltic Sea.  Butterscotch amber refers to the color—an opaque rather than clear material.

Amber has become very sought after and thus very expensive.  It isn’t uncommon to find strands of African amber, or genuine amber on auction sites for thousands of dollars.  Single beads go for $20 to $50. There is something addicting and alluring about the beads; is it the color? The texture? The lore? The price? The mystique?

Before we left Jordan in 1985 I had purchased one amber necklace from Shifty; it was long, with silver beads with six large “amber” balls.  I later broke it up, remade it into another necklace.  I have several amber necklaces, mostly on display.  Though my lust is appeased, amber still has a mysterious  power . 

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