Two New Crosses

I never did finish my previous post. That list of Russian artists should have hyperlinks to pictures of their work. I got Internet Explorer 9 in the midst of it and then couldn't highlight and link in the compose editor. So I painfully set it up by doctoring the html only to find I couldn't publish or save. So now I am back in Firefox and things are back to normal.


Having no computer for a while was actually good for me. I had fun drawing and cut a path in the back yard which I will photograph for my Temporary Blog. I made good use of one of my crosses as an hours advertisement for my bead shop.


I wish I could put it on my websites but my Front Page will not run on Windows 7. But aside from that, and no longer having MSWord, everything else is pretty much back to normal. I'm enjoying the speed of my cable and, to get back to the Russians, I found a bunch of cool YouTube videos on Kandinsky and El Lissitzky that I will make the subject of a later post.

Check Out My Bead Blog

Now and again I have talked about beads here but from now on I will try to stick to "Collage and Life" like the title says. Although you have to admit that "Life" leaves a lot of room for digression!

I now have a new blog called Anita's Bead Blog where I will talk about beads and the jewelry I am designing with them. I may also indulge in occasional rock rambling which I can justify by the fact that I got into the whole "bead thing" through mineral collecting.

Yttrium Fluorite

8-inch strands of Yttrium Fluorite from Anita's Beads. Learn more about Yttrium Fluorite here.

Gaspeite

Here is a beautiful stone for spring--vibrant and naturally green gaspeite from Australia. All are available in 8" strands at Anita's Beads.

Stone "Heart" Trade Beads

I have two strands of stone "hearts" or "leaves" from Nigeria.

Here's a detail of the bloodstone strand (above). Luscious green with the interesting color variation that only genuine stone can provide.

And here's a detail of the nice orange-reds of the carnelian strand (above).

Old Czech Beads

Here's a second parcel of collectable beads, this one of glass beads from the Czech Republic. The center strand is a colorful collection of old Czech "wedding" beads with some "claws" and triangles as the focal.

Pictured at left are two strands of old flat Czech "wedding" beads, one multi-colored and one green. In the upper right-hand corner are two strands of red old Czech "snake" beads. And in the lower right-hand corner is a very colorful strand of old Czech teardrop "wedding" beads.

Come visit Anita's Beads to see more of this special collection of beads which will be on display through the month of April.

African Trade Beads

I just received a few parcels of antique trade beads from a friend who travels around the world in search of the rare and the unusual. The metal rectangles are Baoule folkcrafted brass beads from the Ivory Coast. The cone-shaped beads surrounding it are very rare antique brass funnels from North Nigeria.

Also from North Nigeria is a multi-stranded necklace of blue glass beads decorated with Colonial coins and old brass bells.

The strands to the right include two of graduated cow bone from Nigeria and a strand of Ethiopian "red amber" (which is actually very early German plastic).

These and other one-of-a-kind trade beads are on special display at Anita's Beads and will be available for purchase for a limited time (through the end of April).

More About Spiny Oyster

I was curious to see what I might learn about the spiny oyster and its use in jewelry in books I have at hand. Michael Bahti, in his book Spirit in the Stone: A Handbook of Southwest Indian Animal Carvings and Beliefs (1999) in his section on "Traditional Stones & Other Materials" has this to say:

Commonly known as spiny oyster shell, spondylus comes from the Pacific coast of Baja California and the northwest coast of South America. Until the Spanish introduced coral, it was highly prized for its orange to reddish orange to red colors because it was the only source for these shades. [p.150]

The Quandelacy family has produced some lovely spondylus Zuni carvings shown strung on a Grandmother necklace on page 64 of Dexter Cirillo's South-Western Indian Jewelry (1992).

On page 122 of The Turquoise Trail; Native American Jewelry and Culture of the Southwest (Abrams, 1993) I found a nice photo of a carved spondylus frog effigy (symbol of rain) from the School of American Research Collection, Museum of New Mexico.

One of my favorite books on beads, Louis Sherr Dubin's The History of Beads; From 30,000 B.C. to the Present (Abrams, 1987) provides two outstanding illustrations of South American jewelry made from spondylus beads. Figure 264 features a necklace of blocky graduated beads from the south coast of Peru attributed to the Inca culture circa 1100 A.D. Figure 266 is an incredible bib necklace of predominantly orange spondylus disc beads edged with purple and white shell discs. Measuring 14 inches (43 cm) in width, the piece is from Chan Chan, the capital city of the Chimu in Peru. Dating between 1000-1470 A.D., it is now housed in the American Museum of Natural History in New York

And I can't forget to mention Robert K. Liu's "Spondylus in Precolumbian, Historic and Contemporary Southwest Jewelry" published in Ornament 28(3) Spring 2005. I've been a subscriber for many years.

There, now I can clear one pile off my desk! I'd like to get a look at Jewelry of the Prehistoric Southwest (1978) by E.W. Jernigan. To explore the topic from a more scientific viewpoint, someday I may find the time to examine all of the material that is available on the Biodiversity Heritage Library site. You can check out the amazing list of resources that result from a search there on spondylus. . . but I really have to stop.

Later I hope to put up some pictures of spiny oyster bead strands that are available at Anita's Beads in case you want to make your own multi-strand necklace like the one I made pictured above.

Spiny Oyster Shells

Spiny oyster, also known as the thorny oyster or spondylus has been used to fashion rare and coveted beads from precolumbian through contemporary times. At least 600 years before the arrival of Columbus, the Chimu in Peru were carving and drilling beads from spiny oyster shell. The plate reproduced above is from Louis Figuier's book titled The Ocean World: Being a Description of The Sea and some of its Inhabitants. (New Edition, Revised by E. Perceval Wright. . . with 435 Illustrations) published around 1864 in London by Cassell, Petter, Galpin & Co.

". . . the shells of several species of the genus Spondylus are distinguished for their variety of form and the brilliant colours with which they are decorated. This makes them much sought after by amateur collectors, and procures for them a high price. The shell of Spondylus is solid and thick, . . . nearly always bristling with spines, forming a very peculiar kind of ornamentation. . . Spondylus regius (Fig. I.) is, perhaps, the most remarkable for its immense spines:

Spondulus radians, Lamarck (Fig. III.) is noted for its elegant form:

Spondylus avicularis (Fig. IV.) shows remarkable inequality in the valves:

Spondylus imperialitis, Chenu (Fig. II.) has long projecting spines, like feet:

and the Scaly Spondylus (S. crassisquama, Fig. V.) is covered with scales arranged like so many roofing tiles:

. . . the genus Spondylus is frequently found firmly rooted to rocks and other submarine bodies, and, oftener still, heaped one upon the other, like herrings in their barrel. These animals belong essentially to the seas of warm countries. We find them, however, occupying considerable space in the Mediterranean, where the S. gaederopus (Fig. VI.) abounds:

The variation in the number and direction of the spines is a striking feature in Spondylus. When the whole lower surface adheres to branches of coral--a very frequent occurrence--they are confined to the upper valve; but when a part only of the valve is so adherent, the whole surface becomes covered." [pp.405-406]

Kevin Lampress and Thora Whitehead have written a book titled Spondylus: Spiny Oyster Shells of the World and the Google Booksearch Preview is worth a look to see the color photos on the cover. There is even a Wordpress weblog dedicated to archaeological discussion of the spiny oyster and a very scholarly Spondylous Bibliography has been published there.

Mauritanian Conus Shell

The latest issue of Ornament magazine (Vol. 32 No. 1) contains an article by editor Robert K. Liu titled: "Mauritanian Conus Shell Disks: A Comparison of Ancient and Ethnographic Ornaments." An important attribute of these shells from the marine gastropod Conus is the amuletic power to promote fertility. A bibliography of three dozen or so references concludes the article.