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 Yellow Dusk Mask
The Navaho tell this story about their origin: When the Dineh (the people) emerged from the Third world into the fourth and present world, the gods gave them a choice between two yellow powders. They had to choose between the yellow dust from the rocks and earth, and the yellow corn
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 Fur Trade Era Bead Collecting
"If you like history and romance, it's all there," says Betsy Johnson, also known as "Bead Squirrel" on the rendezvous circuit. Betsy's niece, Marissa Johnson explains, "When you hold one of these old beads in your hand, you wonder who had it last? How did they wear it?
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 Beads for the Savages
By Peter Francis, Jr
When you meet "barbarians," you hand them a string of beads as a token of friendship. The Vikings brought beads to America and on the first day Columbus landed he wrote, [I] gave to some of them ,to others glass beads
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 Boudoirs to Bon Bons
With its swirley shape, flamboyant design, and swishy beaded fringe, a Victorian beaded lampshade is like a flirtatious smile in a roomful of proper strangers. Its voluptuousness evokes images of beautiful women, lace and satin décolletage by the soft light of gas lamps.
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 Mission San Luis
John Winter thought he was totally fulfilled making glass beads when Dr. Bonnie McEwan came knocking at his door. Representing the State of Florida,Bonnie sought John out, hoping he could reproduce some glass beads excavated from a 17th century Spanish mission.
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 HEY MISTER! Throw Me Something!
Gorgeous and gaudy, Mardi Gras in New Orleans is that short season of revelry and madness that precedes Lent. Beginning 12 days after Christmas, with the first of nearly 100 private masked balls, Carnival season steadily picks up speed until Midnight on Fat Tuesday.
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 Nancy Campbell: Antique Mardi Gras Bead Collector
Nancy Campbell, a native New Orleanian, recalls how, as children, she and her friends would follow parades, crunching the discarded beads underfoot. Now she wishes she had stepped more carefully, and rescued some of those beads.
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 Mardi Gras Indian Krewes
Historically, membership in a Carnival Krewe was by invitation only. Few in the ghetto could ever participate in the typical Mardi Gras parade. Black neighborhoods developed their own style of celebrating Mardi Gras. They named their "Krewes" for imaginary Indian tribes
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 Antique Bead Kits
By Peter Francis, Jr
Peter Francis shows you old antique bead kits that were sold in America during the 1800’s and early 1900’s. Not much text, but some very interesting pictures.
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 Beads and the Counterculture
By Peter Francis, Jr
Perhaps the most frequent references to beads in the popular media link them to the "hippie era" of the 60s and 70s, and the so-called "Counterculture."
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 Made in America – Vintage Pearl Buttons
Nowadays, everything is mass-produced overseas and in plastic. Most quality things are best found in vintage and antiques shops. During a recent road trip to Connecticut Laura Introduced us to Florence Waxman, who was closing the Button Box, Mansfield Button Factory. It was the end of an era.
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 Altering Glass Beads
By Peter Francis, Jr.
Beads are altered for many reasons. The first reason to come to mind is aesthetic. That is, people change beads because they look better that way. Sometimes it is done for practical purposes.
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 Beads or Miniature Monuments?
For over 5,000 years, seals - small stone or bone rollers or stamps, engraved with a reversed pattern meant to be impressed in wet clay - were the single most important objects a person could possess.
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 Beads' Role in Human Development
By Peter Francis, Jr
It is not just a question of who has found the oldest beads. Archaeologists are beginning to realize what a profound invention they were and are now discussing their meaning.
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 Forced Labor in the Czech Glass Bead and Jewelry Industry
During the communist era in Czechoslovakia, the bead business had a dark side most jewelry importers are probably still unaware of. The Czechs had a tradition of being notoriously closed-mouthed about where and how their glass products were made.
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 Zhili Byli" (Russian for "Once upon a Time")I am not a spy, but few years ago, a "big noise" in The Bead World unmasked me as "a cold-war spy disguised as a civilian bead researcher" after I published an article called "FORCED LABOR IN THE CZECH GLASS, BEAD AND JEWELRY INDUSTRY"
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 A Trick-or-Treat Fable: The Goose That Laid The Golden Egg
Vladimir Gusinsky, as the juggernaut of "Perestroika" advanced over the Eurasian plain and the Communist house of cards collapsed, our Soviet Rumpelstiltskin took advantage of all the confusion to spin his fabled fortune:
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 Viking Beads from Gotland, Sweden
Beads are, looking at the material from graves, a much-appreciated object. According to Arabic writer Ibn Fadlan, after a meeting with the Norsemen along the river Volga in around AD 920, concluded that “the most valuable jewelery among them are green beads.
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 Bead Revolutions: The Role of Beads in Technological Change
By Peter Francis, Jr
Cast your mind back to the time when there was no place to put things: no pockets or purses; no saddlebags or shelves. How did you keep something? You got a hole into it Thus was born the humble bead.
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 Plants Our Grandmothers Wore
By Peter Francis, Jr.
You certainly know someone (perhaps yourself) who has a necklace or bracelet made of plant material. You know that such beads were popular in the 1960s and 1970s. But, were plant beads ever in style?
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 Seals As Beads
By Peter Francis, Jr.
Most seals are beads with at least one flat, engraved side. When pressed into sealing wax (lac) or clay or inked and put on paper a mirror image is produced, usually idiosyncratic enough to identify the owner.
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 The Beads of Bohemia
By Peter Francis, Jr.
A short historical pictorial about the some of the bead styles that were produced in Bohemia. Included are pictures of actual sales sample cards used by the trade.
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 Basket Beads
By Peter Francis, Jr.
Scott Thompson, has solved the mystery of what "basket beads" are and why they are called that. With a little sleuthing in Wilma Mangum's collection in her store in Blackfoot, Idaho, he found a couple of kits for making baskets.
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 The Venetian Bead Story
By Peter Francis, Jr.
A pictorial perspective of the Venetian Bead history. Extensive uses of old photos/drawings from books and magazines from hundreds of years ago. A story told as only Peter Francis could tell it.
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 The Hole of a Bead -- Not Just a Bit of Nothing
By Peter Francis, Jr.
The hole of a bead, including the opening (aperture) and the drilled area (bore) is important when studying or working with beads. For one thing, it defines the bead.
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 Swarovski and Austrian Cut Crystal
By Peter Francis, Jr.
The beads most Americans know as Austrian cut crystals are among the most expensive and beautiful mass-produced beads on the market. The perfection of their material and workmanship create attractive ornaments.
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 The History of Lampworking
by Robert A. Mickelsen
There is no way to accurately measure the age of lampworking because many of the techniques associated with working glass at a flame were actually in use for many thousands of years before the first lamp, or burner was invented.
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 Bedes Byddyng: Medieval Rosaries & Paternoster Beads
by Chris Laning
Beads, pebbles, or some other small object have probably been used to count prayers for as long as prayers have been counted. No one knows just where or when the practice began.
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 The World's Biggest Bead?
By Peter Francis, Jr.
The beadmaker's name is Daniel Silverberg. He doesn't make beads commercially; he does it because he loves the work.
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 Blown Glass Beads
By Peter Francis, Jr.
Blowing (initially from the lungs; more recently mechanically) is used in the making of some drawn and segmented beads. However, blown beads are defined as beads made from tubes in which incoming air helps form one.
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