Hi Stefany,

May I ask where you went shopping for such an interesting variety of beads on a Thursday in London?

http://www.oldspitalfieldsmarket.com/the-market/thursday-market

lots of expensive made-up, polished jewellery, especially from Afghanistan, etc. also ethnic items, but i found no affordable bead bargains and didnt go the whole length of the market. -saw various historic friends, though.
one confessed she had sold no beads at all recently.
tomorrow doing 2 more locations and will report back again.

this morning i spent less than yesterday...
as well as a rather unusual 1950s mother of pearl shells cruise holiday souvenir necklace there are 3 lots of Venetian jewellery beads all badly threaded so will take apart, a short necklace with unusual chinese (i guess) carved bone interspersed with small coral pink lampwork glass oblates, and 8 delightful lampwork glass buttons, besides a few other loose beads from the bag.

Please can you decipher what the characters carved on the back of each of the 5 big beads tell us?

The signature tells us that these were "signed with a Kakihan" =cursive script rather than printing in Japanese calligraphy. And it is not possible to be certain of the translation.

From my experience, by comparison this is the most commonly used signature I have found on commercial quality ojime made for the Western market during the 1920's and 30's. There were so many with this signature that I would be surprised to learn that they were all made by the same person.

And, by comparison, these are not slide closures for an inro called "Ojime." They are a group of graduated beads made for usage in a necklace.

actually Fred there are 5 carved bone this size, the others are all the same smaller size. i was surprised to see the characters engraved on their backs. The necklace is certainly threaded to 1930s fashion length.

go out to get all that ? I never manage to go very early...

So if you find something less than perfect they are happy to get rid of it...

today i went first to Fred's favourite antique fair which is held once a month on tabletops in a hall in central london. its quite a posh and select event and has gained a reputation, but the prices are mostly HIGH, because almost every trendy vendor is well-informed as well as desperate to make sales.
Saw a lot of high priced amber, some being sold.

after that i battled the tourists as i went around Camden lock market which is a few blocks from my home.
of the hundreds of stalls, kiosks, booths and shops one next to another, all but a couple had the exact same type of souvenir stuff- mugs with pictures of london buses, t-shirts with predictable slogans, bizarre costumes, fridge magnets, smoking gear, harem pants, garments and bedspreads made in either north india or south america, etc etc and i know their main wholesale importer anyway so tedious and disappointing. -however the abundant choice of street food of every nationality is incredible.

here is my haul from this morning-

what i DID NOT buy because of high prices included 2 oriental strands-
1) a tassel necklace with a number of very large beads of red or black lacquer including abalone inlays in a pattern,
2) a broken string with a few real ivory carved Ojime type beads (one resembling a hare) and glass lampwork edo-style round beads, also metal, cinnabar, and a composition 2-face bead
of the kind we have discussed here.

what i show are WHAT I DID BUY:
a boar's tusk, a choker of red Czech tetrahedron beads in coral colour glass, a choker length of pinched pink+avventurina Venetians, 2 necklaces both needing upcycling which are variants of the type of beads made with turquoise-coloured chips embedded in bitumen which may be from Kashmir, etc.
and at the bottom, a rosary of lampwork beads of yellow glass that glow under UV light, and these each have small round dots of silver foil which is impressed with a texture, within the glass the bead is made of. They surely must be Czech too? the cross and the medallion are silver.

this shows the exact texture on the foil dots on each bead, there are 3 on each!
the joining medallion shows the virgin+child with 12 stars on one side and a heart, anchor and cross on the other. the form of the crucifix appears to be made of lilies.

i really would like to find out more about these in particular as i am gradually building a collection of interesting rosaries but am not very well acquainted with all the symbolism. its certainly a mystery why they would choose to use this particular glass and the finely textured foil dots...

of the rosary beads that seem very interesting ? You're so funny describing the sea of the international gadgets that we find everywhere, in Paris too of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R04JEj9LJ_s

As for Bermondsey on Friday being a razzia….LOL. This is a marvelous drama you are imagining.

It is true that I would shop with a "torch" (flashlight) at five in the morning. But I enjoy the taxi ride in the darkness from my hotel in Earls Court, always passing Buckingham Palace and breakfast with the British in Bermondsey at dawn.

I love London because it is the clearing house for the Western world in antiques. There are many wonderful Auction Houses which offer an excellent selection. A person would be LUCKY to find one or two precious items which may have filtered down from the auction houses to Bermondsey.

But you are better off if you live in London, rather than pay travel expenses.

Now Portobello Road on Saturday is best. This is where Stefany's shop was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M4YtALe_8gQ

for the nice schedule of a perfect bead weekend. But that day Stefany should be held at home by her grand childrens by any means...:)
All she showed last 2 days pushed me out this morning as early as 9h AM.
It was grey and colder than previous days, so not many people out and sellers were still arriving. But some lovely finds for me.
A pretty israeli stone brooch, a maybe vintage cloisonné bead, a nicely detailed that I guess an amber imitation. The string holds a french fashion brand tag 'scooter'. But where they make these type of plastic beads? It's a bit heavy to be of amber but pretty details on beads. A close up is below.
I took a few photos of the weekend street sales in Paris so will put them too.

or if he has, he didnt tell me...
(hello dear Fred)
the video he linked was made in 2011 and much has already changed since then.

But after my week of research is completed i will bring some conclusions that include comments on prices
- i dont want anyone to think I'm in competition-
!!
and am also open to offers for anything i've shown in this thread, by the way...

and send inquiries via "mail author"...thanks!

-when the week project is complete i'll try to put everything in order there...

through yours and Paeonia's eyes. Here, we have a few huge antique markets monthly, they are very fun, and proportionately expensive.

wow! what incredible finds you all had. i can't believe stephany's haul over a few days. one would think that new york would offer that amount of finds as well, but i do not feel that has continued here for a number of years, & our markets have suffered so much due to new york real estate which is such a pity. i spent over 30 years shopping our flea markets (& eventually working them for a few years) but i think bead finds have diminished so or have become so expensive. although if any of you disagree, please do share your thoughts. THANKS for sharing your wonderful new acquisitions....you have some beautiful new pieces~! lynne

today i went to the antique market at Covent Garden.
Quite a good vibrant atmosphere.
I found again one of my bead acquaintances and bought from him 2 strings of mixed multicoloured Czech drop-shaped w. African wedding beads for a fairly modest price.

On this venture i didnt go to every single possible London market- as even in general street markets you may find african textiles or secondhand stalls with beads, and there are regular weekend car boot sales, fleamarkets and farmers markets in various neighbourhoods throughout the year.

Altogether over the 6 days i acquired 18 necklace/items, plus the big Moretti mille oval with the label and a handful of other loose jewellery beads.
the Moretti bead and the Rosary were full retail prices because i wanted them enough to add them to my collection anyway- everything else might be described as "worth more than i paid".
these markets are general antique markets so there are lots of stands with silver items or china or vintage bags and textiles or furniture, books, photos, postcards, toys, etc etc. -very few vendors are specialists.

i never go around pointing out what things are unless i'm really sure they want to know.

The markets that gave the most fun hunting were a good mixture of vendors but not too large altogether -some with very valuable made-up jewellery of precious metals and gemstones, or ethnic and tribal importers, or those with cheap tangled heaps that you can rummage through. -any of them may yield good treasures.
You cant go out with any certainty of what you are going to find.
If the market is too large there may be just too many jewellery sellers, and if very well-known such as Portobello or Camden Lock then its jostling with tourists who look but dont spend, they just want you not to walk through the middle of their photos of each other...

Also of course i recognised a lot of the same dealers selling in more than one of these markets.
Bermondsey is a very pale shadow of its former self, but still i found a few interesting things there.
i'd even say that its not so important to get to any market tremendously early because very few other customers are after just beads, most jewellery buyers want to spend serious money on wearable "statements".
(Currently the exception to this is anything that looks like big primitive opaque yellow amber, -even coral has slightly relaxed.)

is far more bead-rich than California! I sigh with bead envy, Stefany, reading about all the choices of different antique markets and car boot sales you have in just a week! Here, it used to be a little better....

For more than 30 years a market thrived, called the Marin City Flea Market. It had antiques and every kind of junk imaginable. David and I met there in 1994. It so happened that I was selling there at the time. From that point on, until it closed in 1995, we went there together, mostly to shop but sometimes to sell, every Sunday morning, weather permitting.

Nostalgia! Also met Tiger-Tiger and Kamol there for the first time ever. And Juliet, who sells many Czech beads at our Nor Cal bead society show used to set up at Marin City as well.
Kamol set up on a tarp on the ground in those days. This was a very large market with hundreds of vendors, including food concessions.

Indeed, times have changed. The flea market was a living for many vendors. Owners of the land sold to a developer, and an ordinary mall was built...most businesses have not lasted there for more than 5 years at a time. I never go there.

There is a huge wonderful antique and collectibles flea market in the East Bay here in Northern Ca. at Alameda Point once a month. It's 100 miles round trip for us so we don't go often, but it's grand for sure.

In our immediate area these days, there are a few regular flea markets. But they are changing. In my opinion, partly due to the convenience of the internet. There are fewer and fewer beads to be found, and the flea market selections seem to be less and less interesting. At least to me. There's fishing gear, books, record albums, used cooking utensils, used clothes and shoes......I'm falling asleep just thinking about it. I go less and less. Sellers AND shoppers of beads and bead jewelry go less and less, and I think they are spending more of their time and money toward bead craft and collectibles on the internet. The last few times I set up with a table of beads at these local markets it was a waste of time better spent tossing a few items up on the BCN classifieds!

Speaking of the BCN classifieds.....the more the merrier, it's free, and much less of a hassle than most any venue!

I’ve never posted on this forum before, but as a London-based bead collector and regular Portobello visitor, I loved this thread. Even though Portobello Road isn’t what it once was, it still has a particular atmosphere that draws you back, and there’s often something new to see. I always leave by 11:30 on a Saturday, or make sure I’m at the Golborne road end, where it thins out a lot.

at any time interesting collectables might be found in London antique shops or charity shops, but Tuesday is not a good weekday for antique hunting in london markets, however i took the opportunity to drive about 40 miles to an outdoor antique event held a few times a year on a showground in Sussex, and although i had to rush back for an appointment this evening i managed to find a few more things!
again i did recognise a number of the same dealers i've already seen elsewhere, but still spotted some goodies that werent too expensive.
i found an almost complete purse made of those small seeds that look like apple pips, a strand of 21 including 11 unbroken cylindrical glass beads from Java resembling venetians, a choker of attractive well-carved modern or recent bone beads with a bone screw clasp, a necklace with 30 really nice spherical Venetian foil beads with faceted Czech sky blue beads between, a great selection of pink wedding beads strung together, an assortment of hand-squidged small donut-shaped amber lookalikes together with some ethnic style metal beads and a moroccan cross-shaped pendant- all fished from a heap in a tray but they may have belonged together in a previous incarnation- and lastly a belt of threaded circles of lustrous shell from the Phillippines which i had to buy (for a ridiculously cheap price) because the vendor flirted with me...

Stefany,
Do you feel that many of these things you are finding are from box lots offered in the smaller auction? Or, are they coming from private collections belonging to well traveled collectors?

most of the small antique dealers i talk to acquire "deceased effects" directly from executors or trustees, or from "totters"=people formerly with handcarts or small vans today who clear out junk from homes, or buying mixed lots in boxes at local auctions because there is china, pictures or silverware or something else in the lot that they know they want. Sometimes also they trade with each other. Thats why they arent terribly interested in the small bits and pieces...
if you appear keen they may tell you some story they think you want to hear...

Lovely interesting thread, thanks Stefany.