GetCrafty Craft Facts

Q: Can anyone tell me anything about this necklace? I'd like to know the origin and the age. I'm pretty sure the beads are Czech, which isn't saying much. In the multicolored segment, there are some transparent beads with a little bit of color in the center, leading me to believe they were dyed at one time, and that they faded. There are a few whitehearts in the mix, both red and blue. The transparent blue beads are a very intense cobalt color. There are a few faceted beads in the mix, and in a few places. 'Bugle' beads have been used instead of three or four seed beads.

A: I saw some necklaces similar to this in Poland and have seen slides of similar necklaces in a talk about the beadwork of Eastern Europe. There is a woman who gives lectures to bead societies who has done quite a bit of research on beadwork from these areas. She spoke to the New York Bead society not too long ago. You might check their website and be able to locate her name and how to get in touch with her. It would be very difficult to pinpoint its exact age. It could have been made yesterday, or over 100 years ago. The only way would be to carbon-date the cord. Parenthetically, did the original clasp have any manufacturer's code stamped on it? This could have established a "no earlier than" date. Its origin was probably here in The States. Our reasons for guessing this is the varied origins of the beads themselves. The white hearts are from Venice and since they were almost all exported, they would have not have been typically used in Europe. There are, from what we can see, both Czech and Venitian beads in the piece from different time periods. Our guess is that this piece was made by a craftsperson using beads from her/his collection. Were it made by a jewler or manufacturer, we would expect to find three-cuts, or jet, or some other more uniform bead choices. As for its inspiration, this is more fun to ponder. You can definitely find patterns for beaded collars in references to jewelry from Bohemia, France, England indeed, all over Europe. Perhaps there was a pattern published for it around the time of the Egyptian craze, following the discovery of 'King Tut's tomb'.