Beads from Toguna Art.

What do you know of the yellow flowered beads on the left?
I have a 28" strand of them that I have had for years and know nothing about....
Thanks.

I've gotten a few here and there on trade bead strands. I agree with Joan and JP that they are Czech / Bohemian. They also don't seem to be as durable as Venetian beads since every one I've encountered has been pretty chipped up.

Hans pointed them out to me, asking me about them.
He also said they were Czech. I had not seen them before, but have seen similar ones on Czech sample cards from the 1920's, 1930's.

The good stuff: real Indonesian ancient beads.

A view of the stand, and some of the latest replicas/newly made beads.

Bead Brothers (Alkmaar, The Netherlands) has a fine collection of antique, old and new Indonesian beads. First picture shows Martine thinking of purchasing one bead?

The vendor is Khyber Gallery (Wageningen, The Netherlands)

Here another two pictures from Khyber Gallery (picture on the right: it's all bauxite)

Nel

in fact the oval opaque beads are red jasper- much harder and denser than bauxite- i had a good look at all of these strands yesterday-

It looks like these are old jasper Lantana beads from the Yoruba living in Nigeria, West Africa.
In the old ones the perforations were pecked, the newer ones like these are just drilled.

Stefany and Hans: I think you both are right! The book "African Beads, Jewels of a Continent" written by Evelyn Simak and Carl Dreibelbis gives an explanation of those beads on page 85. You can see there a picture with jasper beads, locally called lantana. "In the old kingdom of Benin jasper beads were one of the bead types reserved for royalty and a small elite group of family and court members. The wearing of royal beads by ordinary citizins was punishable by death (!). And traditionally the perforations of Lantana beads are not drilled but pecked with a special tool, called esoro. The making of eighteen beads, the number required for a necklace, took up to a week."

By the way: when I was looking for this explanation in the above mentioned book I saw that the copy you can see on my image is indeed a copy directly from this book!
How nice that BCN is there to discuss about these kind of things, to learn and to go for the right answer.

A great deal of the information included in the book has come from this Forum, and particularly from me. Practically no one would know the tool name, esoro, for making lantana beads, had I not presented it.

JDA.

Some of the coolest and tiniest kiffa beads I ever saw....

Yesterday I was also impressed when I saw these beautiful Kiffa's and amber when we had our lunch and I took this picture. Gorgeous Karin!

Nel

Looks like it was a great fair and meet up! Wish I had been there!

Thanks for the nice pictures, Floor?

May we know the names of the people in your pictures? I only recognize a few faces.

Because of the very nice weather (about 23 degrees Celsius) we had our lunch outside: here again some pics.

Picture 1: on the left and then the clock around: Stefany, Peter, Birgit, Jacques, (?, lost her name), the waitress (standing), Martine, Karin and Floor

Picture 2 (right): from the left side: Karin, Eugenie, Giorgio, Hendrik, Stefany, Peter, Hans

Nel

At the head of the table is my friend Patricia.

Birgit works along with some ladies in Mali and Burkina Faso and the great set of black and white necklaces/ bracelets she had on are made of plastic sandals/flip flops. They looked fabulous. Unfortunately I could no longer take detailed pictures by then.

Those who live in or around Amsterdam should really check out Birgit's stall at the Noordermarkt every Saturday.
Some great krobo, finished jewelry and these plastic pieces.

Or have a look on her website!

Check it out: Floor had a fantastic glass necklace on with transparant links (own production)
Karen combined krobo beads with a chinese 'Ho-Ho boy' bead in ivory. For the 'Ho-Ho boy' beads check out Nishedha's website and link below.
http://www.nishedha.com/pieces.php?idcoleccion=14

Floor brought her beaded scarf along with 30.000,- beads or so, but my camera refused. May be Floor can post a picture of that little masterpiece.

Great pictures!

Here is an image of the beaded scarf. Not a great picture, but the actual scarf is at peter's house.

It is made of 15/0 miyuki beads, with the 'netting' beadwork technique. It relaxes me......

I have added a link to my site with some other jewelry I have made.

Giorgio showing off the beaded hat he just bought for an exhibit....

And Peter (actually wearing beads), with Stefany, Birgit and Hans.

Thank you Floor. I always love your posts and photos!!

...scrutinizing a mystery strand from Stefany. It had beads that at first sight had a similar glass consistency of a bead of mine that was discussed previously in 2012 - see link below.
Although those of Stefany had less airbubbles, if I recall it correctly.

I am not sure if Stefany got a satisfactory identification?

Giorgio 'Napoleone', it was nice to meet you eventhough it was so brief. I understood you have your own beadcollectors' meetings in Milan and organize several exhibitions amongst yourselves. It would be fantastic if you could give us an insight of your gatherings/exhibitions and spoil us with some pictures of your treasures.
It would be greatly appreciated!

One bead from the cord in Napoleone's hands.
A well crafted string of modern Javabeads owned by Stefany.
I liked them very much.

Floor, thank you so much for organizing this opportunity to meeting again such a wonderful bunch of beadfreaks.

I will add my name to the list of people who would like to know more about bead meetings or shows in Milano or other cities, just in case they happen when I can be in Europe.

Grazie!

A more decent picture from Giorgio

Nel

unfortunately my ipad decided it was full of images so couldnt take any more... drat!

Could not find the name of the exhibitor on the list but every year the display is amazing! Therefore more images to enjoy ...

Nel

For now: last pictures from this exhibitor/seller

Nel

from Parwan.
Not sure about the ancients next to the amber, but then I did not have a close look. FYI: amber 35€/gram (before negotiations)

Pieternel De Hoogh had a nice stand with great quality/price necklaces. I wanted to take some close-ups but my camera simply refused to focus.
This koli necklace is the only one that came out.
So I hope Nel has some more pictures to share from de duif.

They sure had some great beads, and were eager to share what they knew and also learn more. I pointed them towards this forum, so hopefully they will join us soon.

Hi Martine, I only had this picture which is good enough for BCN. And the only close-up I have is from Pieternel's necklace she's wearing

Nel

Thank you Nel for all the great pictures. I guess between us all, we managed to give a quite good impression of the day, if I may say so myself.

- a Venetian face bead from Floor

- a 7 layer chevron from Hans, which came from a shipwreck in Vlissingen. Now is the question: a Venetian produced or a Dutch produced 7 layer?

More interesting treasures were shown. Maybe Nel took pictures?

Towards the end of the day, I heard from Max - 'Beadbrothers'- he had had an interesting encounter that afternoon. A lady came with a long strand asking him to have a look and value it. It happened to be big heavy intact 6 layer Venetians worth quite some money. The elation of the lady was comprehensible: she had bought the strand for 6,5€ at the recycling shop. I would've loved to see them.

10 minutes later, ordering a last cup of tea before hitting the road, we chatted with the lady next to us, sat down together, talked about the memorable things we had seen, about collection fever and the luck one can get at fleamarkets etc. and suddenly she pulled out a 90cm long strand of big 6 layer chevrons between 35mm and 50mm.
That is what I call 'baraka'!

I enjoyed your portraiture, including the face bead. Thank you, Martine.

I was not familiar with the expression 'baraka'!
-'Baraka' is also Barrack Obama's father's first name.-
Here is the Wikipedia definition:

You are very welcome.
We/I use 'baraka' as used in the Maghreb and by that referring to having 'good luck', more strictly 'a blessing'.
There a first sale in the morning for example will often be greeted as baraka. And that is way before Barrack Obama came into the picture :-)

For "Somewhere Els" (Antwerp, Belgium) is was the first time to show and/or sell her bead collection in De Duif. Her designs are a good mix of ancient and new beads

Nel

See the people, recognize the BCN members ...

Nel

I asked Floor how about her book with the Jablonec beads. She immediately got the proof out of her bag! It was the first copy with some flows but it looks good. To be continued by Floor ...

Nel

There are still a few kinks to work out, but it is getting close now.
Will post on here when it is finished. Will also make it available for free to download.

It makes me really happy to see you all enjoying this event! What a great time!

I agree. Thank you so much for all of the fabulous pictures that have me drooling. I've looked up some of the vendors you've mentioned as well to see if they sell on-line since I have not been lucky enough to see any of their collections in person. But the show looked wonderful, the gathering of people looked so inviting, and the entire day made me yearn to have been part of it! Lynne

I agree. Thank you so much for all of the fabulous pictures that have me drooling. I've looked up some of the vendors you've mentioned as well to see if they sell on-line since I have not been lucky enough to see any of their collections in person. But the show looked wonderful, the gathering of people looked so inviting, and the entire day made me yearn to have been part of it! Lynne