African Trade Beads from the Tucson Bead Show

I just returned from the Tucson Bead Show, which is enormous, exhausting and exhilarating to say the least!  There are buildings upon buildings, booths upon booths, and tables piled high with beads, precious stones, pearls and more. Before I traveled to Tucson, I spent a lot of time on line figuring out what vendors might interest me and where they were located.  Still, I only made it to one building. The first day I found little that interested me.

The second day I found the needle in the haystack!  Five years ago I met an African bead trader.  He carried many one of a kind antique beads that were from all over Africa.  Somehow, I lost contact with him and had no idea how to find him.  I walked into a tent behind the large show and saw a huge table piled with African beads..  It was such a fabulous collection and behind the table was my friend, Abubakar!  Better yet, he remembered my name. 

I bought the beads shown above.  The large blue and turquoise glass beads were made in Holland at least 100 yrs old.  They are African trade beads from Ethiopia.

I also bought the milky wedgewood blue strand of beads. These also are at least 100 years old. They were made in Mali and are called Dogon

Both necklaces are expensive. For the same amount of money I could have purchased fine semi precious stone beads.  People understand the cost of fine quality semi precious stones, but it is a little difficult to explain the cost of these rare, crude beautiful blue beads. What appeals to me is the history of the beads, their rarity and uniqueness.  You can always buy another turquoise, but it is hard to find 100 year old beads.