AFRICAN BEADS on BBC. PROGRAM CALLED "GHANA'S ANCIENT BEADS"

April 16 or 17,2010 the British Broadcasting Company did a program on African Beads from Ghana.  The program is called "Inside Africa" and the segment  is "Ghana's Ancient Beads Back in Vogue".  You can see it on cnn.com/inside Africa. Not only do you learn about beads, the program is an interesting quick visit to Ghana.

Some of the quotes were "" It's not just colors. Where i'm from, if you wear something like blue it's purity,white is fertility, gold is wealth. I know what it means so it is precious to me." Tairee

There is a "culture of sankofa in Ghana." It means "go back and retrieve what you've left behind".  Ernestina Anafu, bead shop owner . She was referring to the long history of beads in Ghana. The gold color Bodum glass beads, shown in the adner-bergart.com necklace above, represented weath and were owned by African kings. They are at least 100 yrs old. The turquoise center bead and the rectangular olive green beads are new recycled glass beads .  The turquoise glass beads are Czech circa 1920 and the rust satin finish beads are Murano glass circa 1950.

Handmade Designer Necklace - Mali? Ceramic and Recycled Ghanian Glass Beads

I promise!  This is the last blog about the black ceramic gift beads(see blog below).  After struggling to do justice to the gift of ceramic beads and completing the task to my satisfaction, I noticed these rectangular olive green and maroon Ghanian recycled glass beads lying around .  I couldn't resist, and I combined them with the black ceramic beads from Mali and added Czech  round light and dark green glass circa 1920 and olive green satin finish  Murano glass circa 1950. It took no time at all. Guess what - it sold immediately! What is the moral of this story?

Design #3- Handmade Designer Necklace of African Beads, Vintage Murano Beads and Kingman Mine Turquoise

Well, I am finally satisfied.

My friend gave me a strand of large, black ceramic beads with an incised pattern including the one in the center of the necklace shown above.  She was working in Liberia, and purchased them there, but was not sure where they were made. I was told by an expert on African beads that they could be from Mali or Burkina Faso.

Jan .21 2010 was the first blog about these beads. It showed  them combined with large brass beads and amber colored beads from Tibet.   It was o.k. but not exciting.

I tried again combining the large beads with ebony beads with inlaid silver, frosted white Vintage Murano glass beads, and turquoise spacers from the Kingman mine in Arizona.

The new materials were an improvement but the necklace remained too clunky. See March 4 2010 blog.

It took awhile to realize the materials and colors were good but the design needed to be simplifed.  By removing two of the large beads, and some of the frosted beads the problem was solved.

Justice was done to my wonderful gift and it is finally a well designed necklace.  Hope you like it!