Relaxing on Boxing Day, I see the snow falling softly outside and hear the sounds of some easy listening music. I have almost finished a wide peyote stitch beaded bracelet for my future daughter in law. The design is geometric, the beads are delicas, with three shades of turquoise plus silver and white. Having worked on it for several months now, I eagerly await the arrival of a silver clasp that will, I hope, keep it from bunching up on her wrist—a common problem with wide beaded bracelets. I saw the solution at a weekly craft fair a few days ago at Ithaca Mall, ordered the required 8 strand tube clasp, and anticipate figuring out how to attach it. Being at leisure this Christmas week, the beading memories flooded in.
The art of the Kenyah Dayaks of Kalimantan, with whom I began working in 1979, featured, among other things, beaded hats, baby carriers, baskets and jewelry. I was not attuned to beads at that time, focusing rather on local environmental practices. By the time I left Long Segar in 1980 though, I had an inkling of the significance of beads to these folks.* I managed to order large quantities for them, with some help from my father (also an anthropologist); he’d created a tongue-in-cheek file folder labeled ‘beads for the natives’ in which he kept relevant correspondence—chuckling to himself all the while.
My mother visited me in Jakarta in late 1994, a trip designed to distract her from my father’s then-recent death. While there, on a tour organized by the American Women’s Club, she visited the home of an elite Indonesian woman—was it Bu Yani?—who sold and made (or rather, supervised the making of) beautiful beaded jewelry. The loot my mother brought home piqued my interest further.
On a visit to the US, a year or so later, I took a beading class on a whim, and found myself totally hooked. Since then, beading has been a recurrent pastime, spawning numerous pleasant memories. It’s a superb hobby to occupy time on a flight—something I did a lot of during my full time work years. I remember my husband worrying that I would stab him, or another passenger, with my needle in such close quarters. Other passengers looked at me oddly when I held up my project to let the needle dangle so the thread could unwind every few minutes. Stewardae stopped to examine and admire these productions. I discovered later that the ‘beading case’ I had bought in Wilsonville, Oregon was actually a gun case (!), but it is wonderfully portable.
My daughter, Megan, has unusually beautiful, flowing, (typically) long hair. It is curly, and its color changes with the seasons: dark brown in winter, full of golden highlights in summer. She quickly learned that I could custom-make her beaded barrettes, of different colors and designs, with fasteners large enough to accommodate her abundant hair. I took as much pleasure in making them (and in seeing her wear them!) as she did in having them. When I was ready to do another project, she’d tell me what color she lacked. Sometimes we’d go shopping together near her home in Washington State, to find the cabochons that formed the center pieces of these barrettes. And I’d seek out tinier stones and seed beads to complement these.
In 2002-3, my husband and I lived in Lansing, New York. It was our first stay in the Northeastern US for decades, and we took great pleasure in the dramatically different seasons—after years and years in the consistently green tropics. I had learned how to make little flat pouches made of peyote stitch, and I designed necklaces to reflect the changing landscape, using colors of summer (greens, browns, pinks and specks of white) in one, and of winter (different whites, browns, greys and pale yellows) in another. For the chains, I used Ndebele herringbone, a technique from southern Africa.
In 2004, I made a month-long work trip to Zimbabwe (where the Ndebele live). I remember my utter delight, sitting on a veranda off my hotel room in a leisurely moment, beading a tubular, white, capped pouch— in another center of beading expertise. I was particularly thrilled to be sitting, looking out at the Zambezi river, which seemed to epitomize exoticism and adventure.
In the mid-2000s, I was stuck in Dubai on a flight from Indonesia to Nairobi, and I entertained myself looking at real gold beads. In the end, spurred by a memory of a lovely creation of Bu Yani’s, which had a gold bead as a centerpiece, I bought three! A few days ago, I finally turned one of them into a center bead in a necklace of interspersed solid balls and cut beads, both of amethyst—to give to my mother for her upcoming 90th birthday. My mother has played a special role in this hobby of mine: besides introducing me to it, in a way, she has promoted it by routinely giving me presents of ‘money to blow’. I usually use that money on beading paraphernalia.
My daughter recently cut her hair, so I’ve had to come up with other reliable beading projects. The bracelet I’m making for my future daughter in law, probably the first of many, represents one solution; and I’ve begun making necklaces with larger beads for other relatives. A few months back, Megan and I found packets and packets of Venetian style small- and mid-sized beads of royal blue with internal cones of various colors for a dollar a pack at a bead store in Everett, Washington. We divided each packet, of varying sizes and shapes, between us; mine have evolved into four or five necklaces, and I still have some left. In October at a professional meeting in Washington DC, I discovered that my hotel was right near a well known beading store, Beadazzled. There, I found beautiful strands of jasper and of amethyst, as well as additional supplies of silver-plated findings**—all of which I brought home, and turned into necklaces for Christmas presents (I made one jasper one for me!).
Selecting colors, types, shapes of stones and of the beads themselves is complex and enjoyable. I took to looking for cabochons, beads, findings, and other beading ‘necessities’ wherever I went. Nepal and Indonesia were wondrous sources of beautifully crafted silver beads; Nairobi had large, multi-colored African trade beads (brought from Venice, centuries before); In Cameroon, I found blue and white chevrons; in Zimbabwe, beautiful green malachite; Portland, Oregon had excellent findings, needles, threads, and an occasional jewelry fair where one could find all sorts of delights from around the world (though Oregon’s economic woes have resulted in my favorite bead store closing); Wilsonville, Oregon had a source of beads coming from Czechoslovakia and from Japan, sources of excellent quality seed and delica beads, respectively; Lacey, Washington has the biggest beads store I’ve ever seen—reminiscent of Costco, this gargantuan store (Shipwreck Beads) has nothing in it but beads and beading supplies!
There has proved to be much more to beading than I’d initially imagined. And now I’m wondering where I’m going to be able to get the lovely goodies I was able to find as I travelled the world—now that I have a more sedentary existence. Aaah well, now I have time to use these treasures I’ve accumulated over the years!
* See Colfer, Carol J. Pierce and Juk Along Pelibut 2001. Beadlore of the Uma’ Jalan Kenyah. The Sarawak Museum Journal 77 (new series): 29-35.
** Findings are things like clasps, bead spacers, wires, bare barrettes, cones…all the supplementary goodies needed to turn beads into jewelry.