Advancing through the past

After spending some time the past few weeks re-visiting sites of interest to my historic bead work, such as the Roman forts along Hadrian's Wall and a few museums, it has inspired me to expand the types of beads I make and also to look back at the beads I've made. For the past two years I've worked as much on understanding how the beads were created as actually making them, it's been a very worthwhile effort and one I will always be glad that I did. Taking several years to really have a feel for the beads and spending so much time looking at examples both in publications and in museums has given me the sense of how important they were to their original owners. Not only as decoration or statements of importance, status, power but also as expressions of admiration, affection, respect or love for the recipients of the beads.

Each bead I have looked at is unique, every one created by a beadmaker somewhere and somewhen in the past. Some of the beadmakers were skilled, some of them were very average and some of them, quite frankly, were terrible but every one of them made beads which were treasured by the owner. It is such an enjoyable experience to look at these ancient beads and then have the pleasure of re-creating them again as they most likely appeared when they were new.

Another aspect that I have been enjoying lately is the expansion from the general to the specific, making beads from particular finds rather than general beads of various types. I have ranged across the centuries from early Iron Age beads on through the late Viking-era beads and occasionally stepped past that in date too. There is a world of beads out there as yet untapped and un-made by me, this year is the one that is the start of that expansion into specific finds. As I make them, I think of the connection with the past, the person who owned that particular bead and the person who will own my version of it. Will it be found in a thousand years?

I hope so.