One of the things I've been wondering about is if the Chinese cloisonne artists in the 1890s-1920s were capable of very fine, detailed wirework, why didn't they make fine, detailed beads?

The pictures compare a small matchbox cover, some large beads made into ornaments, a necklace with melon-shaped agate beads, and a desk set and jar with a millefleur pattern the same as the matchbox.

Desk sets were apparently A Thing during the 1890s-1920s, when people actually used pens and inkwells and blotters when writing letters. So the jar is presumably from the 1920s as well, despite the bright polish on the brass. Ditto the matchbox cover, which presumably went out of style as lighters became more reliable (before then it was evidently stylish to have a "smoking set" in your living room, with cannisters for the cigarettes and cigars that you bought from your tobacconist, a little ashtray or six, and a decorative holder for matches). I've circled a diagnostic tiny chrysanthemum or lotus pattern, and you can spot other identical flowers as well. The tiger lily seems especially diagnostic of 1920s-30s things, and does not appear anywhere on anything after those years.

The patterns on the large beads, although done with fine wires, are not the same as the older millefleur pattern. And the beads on the necklace use cloud motifs that appear throughout the earlier decades of the 20th century, but don't appear after the 1970s.

Thus:
1) Artists in the Deco era were capable of making fine small patterns suitable for beads, but didn't make beads
2) What inspired the production of fine beads, presumably after the cloisonne workshops recovered from the devastation of the 1930s and 40s, when they were pretty much destroyed? Who was left to do this kind of work? And for whom did they do it?

Anybody have some insights here?