Purchasing African beads

The handmade designer necklace above is composed of African beads, except for the vintage gold Murano glass beads that separate the Mali Wedding beads.

The black and white striped beads are old Mali glass. One can tell that they are old by the fine patterns and the thin edges. The new Mali glass wedding beads are of harsher solid colors. They have a slightly squared edge. Be sure when you purchase Mali Wedding beads that you pay for what you get. Like everything else, the old beads are much more expensive than the new ones.

The large circular new Ashanti brass beads are a great substitute for gold. They have a wonderful bronze gold color, distinctive patterns, and come in a myriad of shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, I have purchased strands that have so many defects that I have only been able to use a few of the beads. Defects I have found are: one side is perfect and the other side has holes in it, extra brass drops fall on the piece, and pieces are broken. A word to the wise, examine them carefully before purchasing.

A necklace of old blue Mali wedding beads similar to the one above is on the website
adner-bergart.com. Cost is $250. Use the comment space on this blog or the follow the instructions on the website if you wish to make a purchase.

Zipper Necklaces

What is it?  One has to look hard to identify the composition of this striking necklace!

My friend Louise makes fabulous handmade designer necklaces out of zippers.  She is a weaver and became interested in using utilitarian materials such as plastic plumbing tubes, pieces of metal, and rubber cord in her baskets. Always on the lookout for recycled or useful materials she stumbled upon a necklace made of zippers in South Africa and the rest is history! You can see she has developed her zipper necklaces into an art form.

There was a movement in the period between World War I and World War II called The Machine Age. It was a time when ordinary materials such as chrome, nickel, glass and plastics such as galalith and bakelite were used to make interesting geometric jewelry, furniture, etc.. The Jakob Bengel Factory described in my last post was an important producer of necklaces made from these materials. Louise's zipper jewelry is a descendant of the Machine Age thinking. Louise sells her necklaces in many Museum stores in the US and Europe. To contact her or see her creative and original jewelry, check out her website at zipblingjewelry.com.

Art Deco Handmade Designer Necklaces

I first learned about Jakob Bengel jewelry from an article in Modernism Magazine, www.modernismmagazine.com titled "An Art Deco Treasure Trove" written by Christianne Weber-Stober. Jakob Bengel was the name of a trinket manufacturer in small German town. Influenced by the Bauhaus in the late 1920's they began to produce handmade designer necklaces of Art Deco style which were made from chrome, nickel, glass and plastic. Geometric shapes of cones,circles, parallelograms and triangles formed components of the jewelry.

"The Union of Artistes Modernes" in France, founded in 1929 wrote " To be beautiful, a material does not have to be rare or costly"..."A material is beautiful when it is aesthetically gratifying to the eye and sense of touch simply because of the way it has been worked and used with forthought".

If you want to see some stunning necklaces of more typical Jakob Bengel jewelry, I encourage you to click on the Modernism Magazine website above. Another resource are the books "Art Deco Jewelry: Jakob Bengel", and " Bengel Art Deco Jewelry: Jewelry and Industrial Monumennt in Idar-Oberstein" They can be found at www.arnoldsche.com .