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So I've alwasy been so intimidated by this blogging thing. I always put his pressure on myself to say something so worthwhile, so profound in each and every post. I originally starting writing blogs more as informational articles on beads and beading: to share the love but also to help get traffic to our site BeadinPath.com.

Now the more I read blogs, the more I realize that I need to blog just to help me organize my thoughts. And what an opportunity to get back to my love of writing! Since it seems I never have time to put an actual pen (remember the 'vintage' kind that had ink in it - used with paper?) to paper, I am trying to revive my blog. It will be a dual purposed blog: daily ramblings of what is on my mind, but alos bead tidbits and updates on store stuff. Store stuff is what is on my mind quite often anyway so it's all the same really.

SO, on the store front: We just got in the most darling vintage Margarita crystal beads. Rare & vintage Swarovski. While we have a pretty large collection of vintage Swarovski crystals still these days, it's been awhile since I've 'stumbled upon' any "NEW" vintage crystals. Back in the day, I had to ration my buying as there was so much out there and not a super-huge market (I know, can you believe I used to see walls of 'polka dotted' Art 42 Swarovski beads in varied colors & sizes and didn't BUY THEM ALL?!). But in recent years - there's a market. And the good finds still happen, but they are fewer and far between than they used to be, that's for sure. Luckily people come to us now and that's how we 'stumble' on these treasures lately. Back to the beads...

Vintage Art 3700's and 3701's. Swarovski still makes 3700's but not in these sizes & colors. We found 16mm double coated Comet Or in 24k coating, 14mm Bermuda Blue and other lovelies. Art 3701 is a similar style to the center holed sew-on margaritas (Art. 3700), only 3701's have extra facets on their perimeter. We now have 16mm in the double coated Comet Or in this shape too. I am addicted to wearing gold anything lately, so many of these will go into the BP archives (my stash :) but we'll have them listed on our site very soon. Miss Megan just priced them out for stranders today so we'll have them back in the shop and hopefully online sometime next week.

We also just purchased a large joblot of vintage glass stones & cabochons, mostly made in West Germany, Japan and Czechoslovakia ca. 1930's and 1940's. Again 'back in the day' (and I'm really not that old...) I used to find these high end, highly leaded, lovely colored stones all over the place. I used to be able to buy some of them by the pound!!! That was some years ago though! These are 2-tone colors and other specialty pieces that are hard to find in one place. BUT we're still trying to figure out what to do with them. Such is the problem with having a 5,000 square foot bead store: a space I never thought we'd ever fill! We're already running out of room and have to decide what to do with things like this: lovely things that have a market, albeit smaller than our general bead market. Chris (dear hubby) just built new display tables and I believe this lot is beckoning for a 3rd to display them out loose. These will not get online for a while as we have many Czech glass beads and other lovelies on their way in that take priority

SO, on the daily ramblings... I'm losing my voice. I LOVE karaoke and just came from my friends house where we sang our arses off. Little Chasie (15 month old baby boy) was bouncing and singing into the microphone like the next American Idol. Her husband had borrowed a DJ-friend's set-up to DJ an event their hosting tomorrow night. So he was practicing his set-up in their basement tonight. After a glass of wine or 2, Karen & I (my best girlfriend from grade school) broke out the Cheap Trick and the Journey and sang so long we had the kids begging us to put them to bed! Maybe it wasn't because we sang too LONG... maybe we just weren't all that good! But it was fun. I used to think I could sing OK. I sang in church growing up and was always encourage to perform. But it's the kind of think that if you don't use it, you lose it. I need to practice more often because tonight... was bad. And wow, Steve Perry really could sing... you try it. Separate Ways in your shower tomorrow morning. You'll see.

OK, I have no idea if this blog is going to be something I keep up with or not. I will try... and hopefully it will be more 'on task' and less long winded going forward. And I'll post pictures once I figure out how...

The Real Mardi Gras Beads!

Written by Heather DeSimone


The REAL Mardi Gras Beads!
OK, so years and years have gone by since I first spied boxes and boxes of these dirty old beads in one of the job lot warehouses we used to visit. I had forgotten about them until randomly the topic of Mardi Gras beads came up in a meeting the other day. Our UPS man often suggests in a helpful tone to our mail order manager “Hey? Why don’t you try to get a contract on Mardi Gras beads? You’d make a million?” What he doesn’t realize is that China has that contract these days, (big surprise). But it used to be Europe where organizers looked for beads to throw, drape and give away in the early days of the celebration. And the beads were not the press-molded plastic on a string. They were glass! Can you imagine, watching the parade and eagerly waiting for some strands of lovelies to be thrown at you, flashing whatever you have to flash in order to get some (OK so they probably didn’t do that back in the 1930’s), only to be hit in the face with strands of heavy GLASS beads!?

Mardi Gras Evolution
Mardi Gras, or what it has come to stand for today, was originally a celebration of the flesh, leading up until the time of lent or sacrifice for Catholics. The practices and traditions of Mardi Gras or Carnival have evolved over the years and with the varying inhabitants of Louisiana. But it was in 1920 that “Rex” King of the Carnival or leader of the parades by day, began the ritual of bestowing beads upon revelers. In that era, Europe was where you found beads, specifically “Bohemia” or the area known as Austria, portions of Germany, and Czechoslovakia.

Vintage Mardi Gras!
So back to the dirty old crates of glass beads: These are uncirculated, old Mardi Gras beads, made in the 1930’s in Czechoslovakia. Research in both books and on the internet, as well as years of dealing in and collecting vintage beads, points to the fact that these are very likely the beaded strands that were commissioned for, made for and intended for Mardi Gras. (However, they of course never made it to Louisiana, which is the only reason why they’re available, in tact with original tags, and in most cases, on original strings today.) I knew all this at the time, but for some reason was not intrigued by them. For one reason, they are opaque glass (see Opaque Bead Blog), and we all know how much I yearned for opaque glass beads in past years. For another reason, the strings were all rotted and the beads were a mixed and dirty mess. When we first spied them, yours truly was the only bead-cleaner, bead-strander, bead-tagger, bead-everything-er. I didn’t have the time or the patience. But when our recent Mardi Gras bead conversation took place the other day, I found myself wondering… could they still be there? I made a phone call. Success!!! And here they are. And the strings aren’t even as bad as I thought… and most strands still have their original tags. I love it when that happens, and it’s rare. It feels like an archeological dig when we unearth beads that are actually ‘marked’ and back up our ‘vintage’ claims.

All beads have a history and a story to tell. Even uncirculated old beads that have spent their many years in dirty crates in a basement and never actually made it to the parade, stand for an era, an event or a moment in time. And for $8.00, you too could own a 52 inch strand of Mardi Gras history.



Last Updated ( Saturday, 10 November 2007 )

Types of Vintage Pendants

Written by Heather DeSimone

Types of Vintage Pendants
Recently Dara, our West Coast Sales Rep, had a Summer series of vintage bead trunk shows across California. We send Dara the best of our vintage finds for these shows. What is great is that we can send her items that have very much or very little quantity available & her customers enjoy the process of digging for a treasure. Our store is like this too where we can put out items that are special and one of a kind, or items that have sold down to levels where there are only a few scarce pieces left. Online, this is more difficult because we have to weigh out whether it is worthwhile to put an item on our website that we will likely run out of faster. It’s frustrating for the customer for an item to sell out before they get any and before we have time to remove the item. And it’s a lot of work for our staff to be putting items online to only remove them the next day or two.

So Dara wound up her Summer bead show blitz (see Dara’s bead show blogs) and we recently have been combing through what bead stock was sent back to us from her bead show kit. We’ve been finding loads of lovely vintage pendants including some vintage glass lovelies that we haven’t had online in a while because we had thought we sold out, and some we’ve never had online. It made me realize how many unique styles are out there for vintage pendants, particulary vintage pendants made with glass.

Intaglio Pressed Glass
Intaglio refers to a piece in which there is a design impressed or cut into a shape. Many times a collector or dealer might refer to this technique as ‘carved’ which is actually inaccurate. The motif may look like it was carved, but this style is manufactured using a press-mold technique and not a carving or removing of the product. We have a great example of an Intaglio Pendant in our store. You can find these often in circulated vintage jewelry. The trend in the 60’s and 70’s was to simply hang them from a plated chain.

Reverse Painted Glass
This technique goes hand in hand with Intaglio pieces. Only the process is taken a step further by coloring the concave motif either by hand or machine. This process was used not only in jewelry components, but you’ll find that there was a trend in the 1940’s – 1970’s where reverse painting was also used in home décor items such as paper weights and ornaments. This technique was especially popular in Chinese and oriental collectibles from past eras. Here is an example of a darling reverse painted piece made in West Germany ca. 1940’s. I can’t believe we still have any of these left.

Givre’ Glass
This style of glass is not specific to pendants, however it makes for some of the most alluring color combinations in pendants and beads. Givre’ refers to the style of glass where one color is inside or encased by another. Generally it is a color that is encased in clear, however that isn’t always the case. Swarovski made some truly rare givre’ crystals many years ago (but that is another blog topic) and glass is still produced in many gorgeous givre’ colors. This is a fantastic vintage West German pink and clear givre’ pendant.

Foil Backed Glass
Many beads, pendants, sew-ons and stones are enhanced by coating one surface with a metallic foil. Sometimes this is a layer of actual silver or 24k gold. It caused the front surface to have a glowing quality. The only draw-back is that many times vintage foil-backed pendants will show their age with slight scratches or chips to the foil finish. Sometimes they can be re-coated to restore the pendant and other times the scratches do not detract from the piece's quality. Here is a beautiful foil-backed shell pendant to show you an example of a foil-backed glass pendant. Sometimes just a spot of foil is added to highlight the glass, like in this pendant.

Leaded Glass Pendants
Crystal is also many times, referred to as ‘leaded glass’. Technically, glass doesn’t achieve ‘crystal’ status unless it contains 30% lead. However there are many beautiful pieces containing a lower lead content that are referred to as leaded glass and then they are machine cut achieving the look and feel of a crystal piece. This leaded glass pendant is an excellent example of such a piece that was made in Czechoslovakia ca. 1940’s.

“Carved” Glass Pendants
Again, this term is generally used in error in referring to press-molded glass pieces. However, it has come to be such a common term in glass that it is widely accepted to describe any bead or pendant that has a relief motif. One of my personal favorites is this vintage Japanese glass pendant in “Jade.” The Japanese glass houses of the 1940s’ often strived to replicate authentic gemstones that were considered high-end jewelry at the time in glass such as Jade, Carnelian, Lapis & Malachite. Here is a great example of a "carved" glass pendant.

I hope you have enjoyed this glossary of glass pendant terminology & these gorgeous examples of collectible vintage glass pendants. Be sure to keep an eye out in your travels for these styles as you can often find them in vintage jewelry. Or take advantage of the opportunity to add to your vintage bead collection by snapping up uncirculated glass pieces such as those in our offerings. Either way, you’re sure to look back at your stash a few years later and find that what was readily available at the time, has become more and more scarce on the vintage bead & jewelry market as time goes by.

Last Updated ( Friday, 16 November 2007 )