More about Czech Beads
The technology for glass beadmaking is among the oldest human arts, dating back 30,000 years (Dubin, 1987). Glass beads have been dated back to at least Roman times. Perhaps the earliest glass-like beads were Egyptian faience beads, a form of clay bead with a self-forming vitreous coating.
Common types of glass bead manufacture
Glass beads are usually categorized by the method used to manipulate the glass. Most beads fall into three main categories: wound beads, drawn beads, and molded beads. There are composites, such as millefiori beads, where cross-sections of a drawn glass cane are applied to a wound glass core. A very minor industry in blown glass beads also existed in 19th century Venice and France.
Wound glass beads
Probably the earliest beads of true glass were made by the winding method. Glass at a temperature high enough to make it workable , or "ductile", is laid down or wound around a steel wire or mandrel coated in a clay slip called "bead release." The wound bead while still hot may be further shaped by manipulating with graphite, wood, stainless steel or marble tools and paddles, this process is called marvering, originating from the French word "Marver" which translates to "Marble". It can also be pressed into a mold in its molten state. While still hot, or after re-heating, the surface of the bead may be decorated with fine rods called stringers of colored glass. These are a type of lampwork beads.
Drawn glass beads
The drawing of glass is also very ancient. Evidence of large-scale drawn-glass beadmaking has been found by archeologists in India, at sites like Arekamedu dating to the 2nd century CE. The small drawn beads made by that industry have been called Indo-Pacific beads, because they may have been the single most widely traded item in history--found from the islands of the Pacific to Great Zimbabwe in southern Africa. There are several methods for making drawn beads, but they all involve pulling a strand out of a gather of glass in such a way as to incorporate a bubble in the center of the strand to serve as the hole in the bead. In Arekamedu this was accomplished by inserting a hollow metal tube into the ball of hot glass and pulling the glass strand out around it, to form a continuous glass tube. In the Venetian bead industry, molten glass was gathered on the end of a tool called a puntile ("puntying up"), a bubble was incorporated into the center of a gather of molten glass, and a second puntile was attached before stretching the gather with its internal bubble into a long cane. The pulling was a skilled process, and canes were reportedly drawn to lengths up to 200 feet long. The drawn tube was then chopped, producing individual drawn beads from its slices. The resulting beads were cooked or rolled in hot sand to round the edges without melting the holes closed; were sieved into sizes; and, usually, strung onto hanks for sale.
The most common type of modern glass bead is the seed bead, a small type of bead typically less than 6mm, traditionally monochrome, and manufactured in very large quantities.They are a modern example of mechanically-drawn glass beads. The micro-bead or "seed bead", are so called due to their tiny, regular size. Modern seed beads are extruded by machine and some, (Miyuki delicas) look like small tubes.
Pressed or molded beads are associated with higher labour costs. These are made in the Czech republic, in what was once called Bohemia. Thick rods (20cm?) are heated to molten and fed into a Rube Goldbergian contraption that stamps the glass, including a needle that pierces a hole. The beads again are rolled in hot sand to remove flashing and soften seam lines. By making canes (the glass rods fed into the machine) striped or otherwise patterned, the resulting beads can be more elaborately colored than seed beads. One `feed' of a hot rod might result in 10--20 beads, and a single operator can make thousands in a day.
The Bohemian glass industry was known for its ability to copy more expensive beads, and produced molded glass "lion's teeth", "coral", and "shells", which were popular in the 19th and early 20th century Africa trade.
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