Recreating Ancient Beads – Fustat

The more I look, the more I find!

I am struck by the intricacy of these beads from Fustat in Egypt.  This image is from Ancient Beads World a wonderful resource full of images of historical beads.

Fustat bead 9th-11th Century AD

I like the herringbone pattern that is created not by raking or combing the design but by laying lengths of twisted cane side by side.  If you look carefully you’ll notice that the stripes of colour do not line up as they would if the design was combed.

My first attempt, second from left in this image proved a very simple fact – you can’t use one length of twisted cane to do this!  My brain told me that if I took one length of cane and laid it in opposite directions that I’d get the zigzag effect – my brain was wrong!  In order to achieve the zig zag design two twisted canes are needed – each one spiraling in the opposite direction to the other.

Beads three and four were constructed in this way.

Ooooh but I love the colours in that original bead!!

Here I tried to replicate the twisted cane from the original bead, I haven’t got my proportions quite right, but you get the idea!

To create these beads I first made a base bead and then laid the twisted cane on it, end to end, alternating the canes to create the pattern.  The ends of the bead are difficult to shape nicely because of all of the  cane ends but I think with some practise, nicely rounded ends could be achieved!

I found a description HERE of how these beads would have been made originally, which states that there was no inner bead.  The stripes of twisted cane would have been laid side by side around the mandrel (or maybe no mandrel?) to create the bead.  The bead would have been finished by grinding, most likely to create the nicely shaped ends.  There is even a discription of the cane used in the bead pictured in the link, which apparently had a transparent green centre with this order of colours around it -

wide white, thin red, wide brown, thin red

Pretty interesting eh?

And don’t forget these beadmakers didn’t have a nice shiny torch, propane tank and oxygen ready at their fingertips – they were most likely using small furnaces or lamps – I’m not sure which at this location and time period, it would be interesting to know who used what and when.

It really is no wonder that glass beads were very highly prized possessions!