We beadists are a minority bunch among collectors, it seems, and sometimes I feel as if I'm pitching pennies off a high bridge when it comes to blog posts...listening...listening...listening...and never a "Plop!"

Thank you, Joyce & David, without this list I think I'd feel 'way more sorry for myself.

Hi Chris,

I feel that specializing in any area of bead collecting provides insight into the problems of analyzing other areas. When you focus on other beads, many of the same considerations apply. Your work is more beneficial to you and others than you may realize.

Anyway, I could see you picking up where Susan Claire Dods of Private Collection stopped. She passed away November 25, 2013. If you had interacted in her blog, you would have found a highly appreciative audience. http://www.rossfuneralchapel.com/schedule.asp?id=1452

You have done an epic job specializing in the contemporary cloisonné bead. The problem, as I see it, is that this classic bead has been overproduced. And the Chinese have undercut the price and lowered the quality of the bead to the point of extreme redundancy.

As you know, I also collect antique cloisonné beads. I find collectors who have not experienced the finest examples, think Chinese cloisonné beads all look alike. Also, the best ones need to be turned in order to complete the picture; and photography reveals only one side at a time.

Nearly forty years ago I had a full page, color ad on the back of Ornament Magazine. The photography was done by Robert Liu and featured the antique openwork cloisonné dragon. I met my two best long time customers through this advertisement…The beads were sold to Cloris Leachman.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloris_Leachman

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_SuywOociY

You are not alone,
Just Fred

There seems to be an arc of beads produced with individual care and varied designs in the 1950s-early 70s. My impression is that these were made for Chinese women who could afford nice jewelry with good stone beads, possibly those resident in Hong Kong or Taiwan or out of sight of the masses in their faded cotton suits and peasant dresses.

Then, once the U.S. was open to China imports again in 1971, mass production of a limited number of floral designs got into gear.

Just did a blog post showing some typical examples, still in their boxes!
http://www.beadiste.com/2014/08/puzzling-evidence-what-do-nice-export.html

By the 1990s these designs were increasingly carelessly made and unattractive - I remember barrels full in Tucson, and they weren't pretty.

The Beijing cloisonne factory itself evidently went bankrupt around 2001 or 2002. A Canadian couple seems to have bought up the last of the bead stock when they visited the Tucson shows shortly afterward.

So the Chinese have ramped up cloisonne production again - mainly huge sculptural pieces, imitations of Qing works, and baroquely extravagant vases, clocks, table sculptures...but no beads. Some cute snuff bottles, but no beads.

The beads being cranked out by the container load all seem to be twisted wire work or stamped shapes, with epoxy enamels(?), bright and shiny, cute inexpensive trinkets for fashion jewelry. [Later: Actual cloisonne beads still seem to be made, but they're very abbreviated in design - some with large holes for Pandora-style bracelets]

Follow the money, I guess.

From my Chinese-literate friend from Taiwan:

Yes, it is pronounced "jing". Its meaning is usually related to emperor or royalty or a large city where royalty lives.
It could be the name of the factory.

Poking around the internet a bit more, discovered it's also an abbreviated form of Bei-Jing -

the Chinese character jing. It means capital and stands for Beijing.

http://www.living-chinese-symbols.com/2008-olympics.html

Perhaps because I'm reading Schneider's The Art of Japanese Cloisonne Enamel, wherein is recounted the incredibly painstaking efforts of Japanese cloisonne artists to develop enamels, shapes, patterns, and innovative techniques, such contemporary Chinese cloisonne works as the jars in the picture give me heartburn.

Such an excellent example of how you should at least hire people who know how to draw - note especially the one rear leg of the boar/rhino? and the example where it looks backward and sorta floating in space all by itself. And how the archer's arms more resemble a washerwoman's chest. This isn't just a contemporary problem - in my blog post on dragons there are examples of poor drawing comprehension wherein the dragon's head appears to sever its body.

Chinese cloisonne master Zhang Lu, if I am reading the Google translations of his interviews correctly, has commented on how cloisonne artists of over 20 years' experience were turned out onto the street when the Beijing Arts & Crafts cooperative went bankrupt c2000. He re-hired as many as he could to form another studio. And now they have had to take steps to authenticate their works because of all the forgeries cranked out "in the villages."

Peter Hessler in Country Driving recounts an encounter with a Chinese woman hired to crank out cheap faux-European landscape oil paintings. She wasn't particularly interested in art or painting, but this was a job she could do, so she just does it. Peter helps her with some mis-spellings on the signs in some of the pictures.

This phenomenon isn't confined to China, of course; it's everywhere.