March 2024 – Global History of Ceramic Beads

Destination: Burkina Faso

Welcome back and happy Easter! This month we’re heading over to Africa to look at the rich history of ceramic beadmaking in Burkina Faso and Mali! Particularly in the Iron Age (~1200 BCE – 500 BCE), societies across West Africa had abundant clay crafts as well as robust inter-regional trade. Sonja Magnavita’s “The Beads of Kissi, Burkina Faso” (2003) details the contents of an excavated cemetery in Kissi, including more that 4,500 beads made from shells, bone, glass, quartz, carnelian, and–yes–ceramic. It seemed that ceramic beads from before the 9th century came in barrel and cylinder shapes whereas after they commonly took the form of segmented units of 3-8 beads (figures 5-6 shown below).

While archeologists know that ceramic beads were used frequently in necklaces, anklets, and waist beads, Magnativa’s team had no luck finding any ceramic jewelry in situ–that roughly means “as it was left” in latin. I found it very interesting that glass beads seemed to be a marker of wealth in Burkina Faso, as Magnavita notes that glass beads were only found in graves with additional “exotic” crafts/items. Some of the glass beads from the Kissi site can be seen below:

With all of this written information gathered, I’ve also collected a handful of images from both Mali and Burkina Faso (very close together, luckily for me) for reference and inspiration. Not only can you find the images in this months Gallery tab, but I actually encourage you to go look at them! While I definitely won’t be able to replicate the intricately beaded cuff of a royal Xhosa woman, I will certainly be drawing inspiration from these images.

That’s all for now, and I’ll see you later this week (hopefully!!) with the Komboloi bead results. Cheers!

Get Fired Up (Greek beads update + April plans)

Hey gang. Disheartening news: we are behind schedule for the first time ever. I know, it’s devastating, but we will make it through this hardship to April… where we’ll be looking at African beads!!! Very exciting, almost makes you forget about the great woes of March. Basically, I should have planned a little better around our spring break week but I ended up trying to rush the whole process in two weeks instead. Don’t do that.

After drawing up my plans I realized I had no idea how to make ceramics look like amber (a traditional material for Komboloi beads), so I made an outrageous amount of glaze test squares to determine the perfect combination that would yield that nice orange glow.

secret experiments in my evil ceramics lab >:)

Featured above is LG-57 “Intense Red”, TP-64 “Carrot”, V-303 “Terracotta”, LG-65 “Amber”, and S-2729 “Citrus Splash”. I tested nearly every possible combination of these glazes on red and white clay to see what would look the best, mostly using LG-65 as a topper for the other glazes to get that marbled burnt look.

I ended up picking red clay because it seemed like I might get a better undertone with that as a base, and I think I was right! I ended up liking Carrot + Amber, Intense Red + Amber, and Citrus Splash + Amber (all above) more than the rest of the testers. I’m pretty new to layering glazes but I was pleased with these even if Citrus ended up a little wonky. For now, the plan if definitely to glaze the beads with the Carrot combo because I think that captured the orange tone the best.

I will be very honest and vulnerable for a moment and tell you, cherished reader, that I made a truly abysmal first version of the owl charm. I had been making those tiny circle beads for two hours and I was so sick of having fancy mud on my hands that I did a poor job and ended up having to redo it later anyway because it looked so bad. This raw and emotional story (sarcasm) is an example of why it’s okay to take breaks, and how making art is so not worth it if you aren’t enjoying yourself (serious). I did a second pass at the owl charm for Athena and I’m much happier with it now. A lot of the delays came from having to expand the holes in every single bead because I poked them too small the first time and they would have closed after a bisque firing (because clay shrinks when you fire it!!). Rather than keep rushing through this week and risking a kiln explosion (I’m still explosionless for now, will keep you updated) by glazing and bisque-firing at the same time, I’ll be dipping these bad boys in glaze next week and tossing them in the kiln afterword.

I’ll be back here later to tell you more about the super exciting stuff to come, and I’ll hopefully have some history for you all about Mali and Burkina Faso!! Get hyped!

Greek Komboloi Beads

Hey team! We are back at it again with some more killer beads after a relaxing spring break hiatus. This month we’re looking at the great country of Greece and their traditional worry beads, also known as Komboloi beads. These beads are rumored to have originated in the grand mountains of Greece, made by monks and used for prayer as a precursor to the rosary. Almost like a beaded bracelet, a traditional Komboloi features an odd number of beads, usually any multiple of 4 + 1 extra, as well as a large charm that cinches the two ends of the string together.

These images from the Greek Komboloi Museum showcase the kind of structure I’m talking about, including an empty stretch of string for your funny little fingers. For my beads, I decided I wanted to make my charm a little more detailed to make up for the fact that I’m basically just making 22 copies of the same tiny sphere otherwise. For some inspiration, I looked up which Greek god is responsible for ceramic affairs, and lo and behold! It’s Athena! More generally known as the goddess of strategy, Athena is one of the coolest Greek gods and also Annabeth Chase’s mom.

Check out the gallery for some of the references I used drawing these plans!

In my research it seemed like these beads were typically made out of coral (reasonable for someone in the Mediterranean, not so much for Milo of North Carolina), but I thought I might pay homage to the other illustrious materials used for Komboloi by trying to make amber-adjacent beads!

I hope to get crackin’ on these beads this week and I can only pray that making an owl out of clay is not as hard as I fear it may be. See you all later this month with the results!!