The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1895-04-28
HOW BEADS ARE MADE.
One of the Oldest and Most interest
ing of the Minor Arts.
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Half dozen years ago many a pom
derous dame rode out In her carriage with
thousands of black and white beads
looped and tasseled upon her dress. There
were pendants of beads on her hat; beads
dangled from her parasol and her shop
ping bag tinxled with beads. Children
in school wore them as commandments
laees, bracelets and rings Of a score of
different colors.
To-day their use in the United States
has largely gone out of fashion, except
within certain narrow limits, and the
manufacture of them. stiH a great indus
try, depends for its support mainly upon
south America, Africa and the Islands Of
the sea. In those countries beads have
been worn for hundreds of years and
fashion has little influence upon their
use. Indeed. If explorers are to be be-
lteved many a black savage is clad in a
necklace of beads and very little else
Chinese are the oldest bee makers in
the world. They have made beads so
long that even their historians do not
mention a time when the industry was
not ancient. And the Chinese to-day do
the work just as their forefather did,
and the styles are exactly the same.
After the Chinese no people are so ex-
pert as the Nenetians. At present there
are more than 1000 workmen in the island
of Murano alone who are engaged in bead
making. The few manufacturers in other
parts of the world have all learned the
secret of the craft in Venice.
For beadmaking there must be rope
walk" connected with the glass factory.
A rope walk is a narrow, straight gallery
about $50 feet long, and so situated that
The middle is not far from the furnaces
in which the glass is melted. The first
process is the making of ordinary tubes
like those used in almost every drug store.
Two brawny wOrkmen, with bare, brown
arms, seize a huge wedge OF the metal
as the molten glass is called, between
their blow pipes and after il has been
blown hollow they gradually stretch it out
into long, swinging rope.
When it has been reduced to the proper
size for the beads about to be made, it is
laid away to cool, after which workman
comes along and in wonderfully deft
manner chips 1t into fragments of uniform
size. Often for very small beads these
are not much larger than a grain of
wheat, but so carefully is the work done
that the little cylinders are rarely crack
ed or spoiled.
The pieces are now picked up by boys
and placed in a tub with sand and ashes
and stirred up carefully. In this way the
holes in the embryo beads are stuffed full,
thus preventing the danger of the sides
fattening together when heat is applied.
They are next placed in a Skillet-just
such a one as the housewife uses In frying
eggs-and stirred over very hot fire until
the ragged edges where the pieces We're
brokn from the tube are rounded, giving
the bead a globular form. As soon as
they arc cool the ashes and sand are
shaken out of them In a sieve and then
they are separated according to size by
other sleeves They are taken next to a
long table around which a whole flock
of boys and girls are sitting. If the glass
is colored as it often is, the piles of
beads on the table suggest a rainbow
with every hue from jet-black. through
red, green, yellow and blue up to white
Each child has needle and thread
and by long practice the beads are placed
on strings with almost uncomfortable
swiftness. And the children keep an eX-
act count, too so that the manufacturer
knows just how many beads he is sending
out The threads are tied into bundles
and shipped to almost every port where a
vessel touches.