Ancient Roots of Glass Bead Making
Glass bead making goes way back. The oldest beads are over 3,000 years old. People have made glass beads since at least Roman times. Before real glass, Egyptians made faience beads. These were clay beads with a glassy coating. Glass beads tell archaeologists a lot. Their presence points to trade. And the chemical makeup helps trace where beads came from.
Wound, Drawn, and Molded Glass Beads
We sort glass beads by how they’re made. The main types are wound beads, drawn beads, and molded beads. Then there are hybrids, like millefiori beads. Those use cross-sections of drawn glass cane added onto a wound glass core.
Wound Glass Beads
The winding method is probably the oldest way to make true glass beads. You heat glass until it’s pliable. Then you wind it around a steel wire or mandrel. That wire gets coated with bead release—a kind of clay slip. While the bead is still hot, you shape it. You might use tools made of graphite, steel, brass, or even marble. This shaping step is called marvering, a word that comes from French. You can also press the hot bead into a mold. And if you reheat it, you can decorate the surface with colored glass rods called stringers. This creates lampwork beads.
Drawn Glass Beads
Drawing glass is an ancient skill too. Archaeologists found evidence of mass bead production in India. At sites like Arikamedu, around the 2nd century CE, they made Indo-Pacific beads. These beads spread all over—from Pacific Islands to Great Zimbabwe. They might be the most widely traded item in history.
All methods of making drawn beads use the same idea. You pull a strand from hot glass. And you leave a bubble inside that becomes the hole. At Arikamedu, they used a hollow metal tube. They stuck it in hot glass and pulled out a continuous glass tube. In Venice, they used a puntile—a tool for gathering molten glass. They’d add a bubble in the core, attach a second puntile, then pull. Skilled artisans could stretch the cane up to 200 feet long. Then they chopped the tube into bead-sized pieces. After that, they cooked or rolled them in hot sand. This rounded the edges without sealing the holes. Finally, they sieved them by size and strung them on hanks for sale.
Modern Seed Beads
The most common modern glass bead is the seed bead. They’re tiny, usually under 6 mm (0.24 in). They’re often a single solid color. These beads come from machines. Glass is extruded, drawn into long strands, then cut into short beads. Most are round, but some, like Miyuki delicas, look like small tubes.
Pressed and Molded Beads
Pressed or molded beads cost less to make. In the early 1900s, many came from the Czech Republic. Thick glass rods were heated until molten. Then a machine stamped them. It even pierced holes in them. After molding, beads were rolled in hot sand. This removed seams and made edges smooth. By coloring the glass rods, makers could create beads with stripes or fancy patterns. One rod feed could make 10 to 20 beads. A single operator could make thousands in a day. Some beads were made in rotary machines. Molten glass was fed into a spinning mold. This created solid or hollow beads.
The Bohemian glass industry copied expensive bead types. They used molds to make beads that looked like lion’s teeth, coral, or shells. These were popular in 19th‑ and early 20th‑century African trade.
Lampwork and Flameworking Beads
Lampworking is a modern spin on the wound bead method. It’s detailed and takes time. In 19th‑century Venice, bead cores were made at big furnaces. Men handled large batches. Decoration—tiny patterns and colors—was done by women at home. They used oil lamps or spirit lamps to reheat bead cores. They added fine lines or dots of colored glass. They got paid per bead.
Today, lampwork beads are made with gas torches. A glass rod is heated. As the glass softens, it’s spun around a mandrel covered with bead release. More glass colors can be added to create designs. Often, the bead goes into a kiln afterward. That makes it tougher.
Modern bead makers use single or dual fuel torches. That’s why lampworking is also called flameworking. These torches mix fuel and oxygen outside the torch—called surface mix. This makes the flame quieter and cleaner than metalworking torches.
Torch styles vary by country. American torches angle at about 45 degrees. That comes from scientific glassblowing tools. Japanese torches are straight up, like big bunsen burners. Czech production torches are almost horizontal.
High-End Art and Specialty Glass Beads
Dichroic glass gets used to make fancy art beads. It has a thin layer of metal fused to its surface. That gives it a shiny, metallic look. The weird part is that the color shifts between two hues depending on how you look at it. You can shape these beads either by pressing them or by lampworking. But be careful. If you leave the glass too long in the flame, the metal layer turns silver and burns off.
Italian techniques like latticinio and zanfirico were adapted to bead making. These use large decorative canes made from smaller rods. They wrap those in clear glass, then extrude them into beads with twisting stripe designs. No air gets blown into the glass. You need a big furnace and kiln to do this right. These are furnace-made beads, not blown ones.
Lead crystal beads are cut and polished by machines. They include high levels of lead, so they shine extra bright. That sparkle comes with a downside though—they break easily.
You can also make beads from tubing. That includes lead glass used in neon signs or borosilicate glass. Those tubes can be blown into beads. Soda‑lime glass can be mouth‑blown, but it’s rare. More often, it’s wound around a mandrel to create hollow beads. Those aren’t truly mouth‑blown either.
Beads can be fused from sheet glass or made using ground glass as well. In modern Ghana, people mold beads from powdered glass. In Mauritania, women have made Kiffa beads for years. They grind up seed beads or recycled glass, make a powder, then shape it into beads.
When you press ground glass into a mold and paint it beforehand, you’re doing pate de verre. You can make beads this way, but it’s more common for pendants or cabochons. And you can paint lampwork beads with special glass paints after you make them.
Origins of Powder Glass Beads
Powder glass beads are unique ornaments. The oldest ones date back to 970–1000 CE. They were found at Mapungubwe in South Africa. Today, most powder glass beads come from West Africa. Ghana is a key production center.
Ghanaian Bead Makers
We don’t know exactly when bead making began in Ghana. But it is strong among Ashanti and Krobo artisans. Krobo people have made these beads since at least the 1920s. Even earlier origins are likely, though archaeology is limited. The first written record was by John Barbot in 1746. Beads remain vital in Krobo traditions. They mark births, coming‑of‑age, weddings, and funerals.
Materials and Glass Sources
To make powder glass beads, artisans use finely ground glass. They use broken bottles and scrap glass as their main source. Sometimes they buy specific glass types. These include cobalt medicine bottles, cold cream jars, plates, ashtrays, and window glass. When ground, these yield bright, glossy beads.
Coloring and Decoration Techniques
Makers add modern ceramic pigments and colored glass shards to the mix. They create varied styles and patterns. In some beads, they include small glass fragments. Recently, artisans have begun embedding whole tiny beads into new designs. These techniques push the tradition further.
Types of Beads
Krobo powder glass beads are made using vertical molds shaped from a special type of local clay. These molds have several indentations, one for each bead. Inside each indentation is a smaller hole in the center where a cassava leaf stem is placed. The mold is filled with finely crushed glass, and the glass can be layered to create patterns and color sequences. The method is kind of like making a sand bottle or sand art. This is known as the vertical mold dry powder glass technique.
When fired in clay kilns, the cassava stems burn away and leave behind holes in the beads. In some cases, instead of using stems, the hole is made after firing. While the glass is still hot and soft, it's pierced with a handmade pointed metal tool. Firing continues until the glass melts and holds its shape.
There are three main types of modern Krobo powder glass beads.
The first type is fused glass fragment beads. These are made by melting larger chunks of broken bottle glass or old beads. They're usually see-through or partly see-through. The hole and final shape are added after the bead has been fired.
The second type is made from glass powder and consists of two halves, often shaped like bicones or sometimes spheres. These halves are fused together in a second short firing process.
The third type is called "Mue ne Angma", or "Writing Beads". These start out like regular powder glass beads made from finely ground glass. After the bead is formed and fired, a glass paste is applied to make designs or symbols. The bead then goes through a second firing, which fuses the added glass decoration to the surface.
Akoso beads are an older type of dry-core powder glass bead made by the Krobo, mostly during the 1950s. Yellow is the most common color, though green, blue, and black versions also exist. The ends and middle often show wear, revealing a gray inner layer. Decorations were made using strips of heated glass formed into looped patterns, stripes, and circles. The base powder and decoration glass were both made from crushed Venetian beads or from small whole Venetian types like green-heart and white-heart beads.
Meteyi beads came from the Ashanti people in Ghana. These were made in horizontal molds, which is why you’ll often see seam lines running along them. Most of these beads are oval in shape, with a rough surface on the side that touched the bottom of the mold. The common color is opaque yellow, but they can also be found in green, blue, or white. Striped designs in blue, yellow, white, or red were added. Production of Meteyi beads stopped in the 1940s.
The Yoruba people of Nigeria also made powder glass beads, but their method was different from the Krobo’s. Instead of using molds, they shaped the beads by hand. They moistened finely ground glass with water and formed the beads manually. Holes were made before firing, using a sharp tool.
Ateyun beads are one type made by the Yoruba. They came in different shapes, but were always red to look like real Mediterranean coral. Real coral was hard to find and very expensive, so the Yoruba made their own versions from glass to make them more accessible.
Besides red coral copies, blue beads were also highly prized. Keta awuazi beads likely came from Nigeria or maybe Togo. They were shaped in horizontal molds, which left mold lines on the sides. These beads are cylindrical. Production ended in the 1940s.
Krobo bead makers also made their own blue powder glass beads, copying the Keta awuazi style. They used glass from cold cream jars to get the right shade of blue.
Kiffa Beads
Kiffa beads come from Mauritania and are made using a method called the wet core technique. The process starts with finely crushed glass powder, which is mixed with a binder like diluted gum arabic or even saliva. This mixture forms a thick paste, or slurry. Artists use steel needles or pointed tools to apply this paste by hand, creating detailed decorations. The beads aren’t made in molds. They’re shaped manually, then fired in small metal containers, often sardine cans, using open flames.
These beads are rare and highly valued. They’re named after the city of Kiffa in Mauritania, where a French ethnologist, R. Mauny, first documented them in 1949. Kiffa beads show a high level of skill, considering how basic the tools and materials were. Makers used crushed European glass beads or broken glass, bottle shards, pottery pieces, twigs, tin cans, and fire. Even with those limited resources, they achieved stunning detail. The name “Kiffa bead” was later coined in the 1980s by American collectors.
Peter Francis Jr. suggested that powder glass beadmaking in West Africa might go back hundreds of years. It may have started as early as 1200 CE in Mauritania. The beads are believed to imitate older Islamic beads made in places like Fustat. But so far, no archaeological evidence has confirmed their exact age.
To make the beads, glass is ground to powder and mixed with a binder to make a paste. Artists apply this slurry with a steel needle to decorate the surface. Beads are placed in small containers, usually sardine cans, and fired over open flames. There are no molds involved in the process.
Kiffa beads were made in many shapes. There were triangle-shaped ones in blue, red, and multicolor, with layered decorations in yellow, black, white, red, and blue that often looked like chevrons or eyes. There were also diamond-shaped ones, cigar-shaped and conical ones, and lots of small round or oval ones. The color patterns on these traditional beads stayed the same: red, yellow, black or dark brown, yellow again, then red, white, blue, white. The front and back were usually both decorated. Different beadmaking families had their own unique styles.
For the people who wore them, these beads had symbolic meaning. They were seen as protective and were linked to fertility. The patterns, shapes, and colors had meanings, though most have been lost over time.
Diamond-shaped beads were used in bracelets, sewn onto leather, and arranged in a fixed ratio of blue to red to multicolor types. Their designs were thought to protect the wearer and help with fertility. Some may have been made to look like cowrie shells. Triangle and round beads were used in hair ornaments. Traditional sets might include two matched groups of three triangles: one blue, one red, one multicolor, worn at the temples.
The smaller round or oval beads were also used in hair or necklace sets, combined with other glass or stone beads. These were often made by decorating a pre-shaped bead in red, blue, or white with glass slurry. These base beads were likely 19th-century molded beads, possibly from Czech factories. Some small cigar or cylindrical beads were made by joining two or three molded beads together. These are usually fragile and break easily.
The last traditional Kiffa bead makers died in the 1970s, and the craft disappeared. But in the early 1990s, some local women started making them again using the same methods. Even so, the quality and detail of the new beads have never matched the old ones. Western artists have made their own versions out of polymer clay or lampworked glass, and there are also fakes from places like Indonesia, but none of them look as good as the original Kiffa beads.
Murano Beads
Murano beads are detailed glass beads that come from the long tradition of Venetian glasswork. Since 1291, glassmakers on the island of Murano have been perfecting their methods. They’ve developed ways to make many types of glass, including clear glass, enameled glass known as smalto, glass with gold threads called aventurine, multi-colored millefiori, opaque white glass called lattimo, and glass that imitates gemstones.
The first step in making Murano beads is to produce color canes. These are thin rods of colored glass. Making them is a precise science. The chemical mix for each color has to be exact. For example, copper and cobalt make aquamarine. Ruby red comes from a gold-based solution.
Most Murano beads are made using the lampworking method. This involves a torch or air pump burner, along with a mandrel, which is a rod used to shape the bead. Originally, glassmakers used iron rods coated with a release material to keep the glass from sticking. Now they use copper tubes, which make it easier to create different bead shapes.
Lampworking takes time. Every bead is made by hand, one at a time. The artist heats glass rods or tubes until they melt, then wraps the molten glass around the mandrel. They layer different colors, and sometimes add gold or silver leaf to get the right design. After shaping, the bead has to cool slowly. Once it cools, it’s taken off the mandrel. This leaves a hole through the center for stringing.
Some common styles made with this method are wedding cake beads, also called Fiorato. These are decorated with glass roses, swirls, and dots layered on top. Venetian foil beads are another kind. These have bright colors and metal foil melted inside the glass.
Seed beads, or conterie, are small and round. To make these, artists form hollow tubes of colored glass, then chop them into pieces and re-fire them to smooth out the edges and set the color.
Chevron beads are known for their red, white, and blue zigzag design.
Millefiori beads are made in a similar way to chevrons or rosettas. But in this case, the color range is broader, and the canes used are solid, not hollow. The designs are more abstract.
Today, the glassblowing method used for many of these beads is called Filigrana, or filigree. To make these striped or spiral beads, glassmakers arrange canes of glass, then use a blowpipe to pick them up and form them into beads.
Trade Beads: History and Use in Global Exchange
Trade beads are glass beads that people once used to trade for goods, services, and even human lives. These beads worked like currency and were one of the earliest tools humans used for barter. Some experts think bead trading might have played a part in how spoken language developed.
Back in the 1500s in continental North America, trade beads were often called aggry or slave beads. These decorative glass beads were used like tokens to get goods or services. They were also used to buy slaves, which is where the name "slave beads" comes from. Native American tribes worked these beads into jewelry using various beadwork methods. European traders also used them in Africa to get resources, including people sold into slavery.
Aggry beads are a specific type of decorated glass bead from Ghana. This type of bead trading kept going until the early 1900s.
The goal behind making these beads was to help European explorers and traders move more easily through Africa. Bead production took place all over Europe, but Venice became the main center for it. In fact, a 2022 archaeological report confirmed that European beads were still making their way into Africa in the late 1800s. They traveled along native trade routes deep into the interior.
These beads didn’t just stay in Africa. They’ve been found across the United States, Canada, and Latin America. The designs were diverse. Indigenous groups in North America had clear preferences for certain shapes, sizes, and colors. The more often a type of bead shows up in archaeological digs, the more popular it probably was. Early in the trade, large blue beads were especially wanted. But it’s still not clear exactly when the bead trade with Native American groups first started.
In 2022, researchers reported that Venetian glass beads had been discovered at three ancient Eskimo sites in Alaska, including a place called Punyik Point. This spot is empty now, but it used to be along a key trade path between the Bering Sea and the Arctic Ocean. The find surprised researchers. These beads were made in Venice, Italy, and somehow crossed Europe, then Asia, and finally reached Alaska by way of the Bering Strait. If this theory holds up, it would mark the first solid proof of European-made items reaching North America overland, not by sea, and before Columbus. The nearby materials dated the beads' arrival between 1440 and 1480. But not everyone agrees. Some scholars argue the beads couldn't have come from Venice that early, saying they weren’t made there until the mid-1500s. Others suggest they might be French and from the early 1600s.
The slave bead trade grew so large that massive amounts were made and shipped out. These beads were often used as ballast on slave ships heading to Africa. On arrival, traders exchanged them for slaves, ivory, gold, and anything else that was valuable in Europe or globally. There wasn’t a single standard bead design. The look of each bead depended on what buyers wanted.
Millefiori beads, which means "a thousand flowers" in Italian, were among the most traded. These were made in Venice. Glass artists created flower or stripe patterns using glass canes, then cut and molded them onto a solid-colored bead base. Some African beadmakers, like the women in Mauritania, tried to copy these patterns using powdered glass to make what's now known as kiffa beads.
The reason trade beads worked so well as currency came down to scarcity and demand. In many parts of Africa, glassmaking wasn’t common. That made these beads rare and valuable. Local artisans couldn't easily reproduce them. Beads became a way to store wealth and show off social status. The more beads someone wore, and the more detailed the designs, the higher their status appeared. That made demand for trade beads in Africa huge.
