Collection: Worldwide Beads

Since the Dawn of Man, Beads Have Intrigued and Fascinated

Beads have been used to symbolise prominence, to represent magic, worn for protection, used to create beautiful jewellery and in some ethnic and tribal cultures used as currency when trading for goods.

It is generally viewed that beads were among the first durable adornments worn by early man – possibly as talismans to protect against evils and the forces of nature – before being worn for beauty and status.

The earliest known beads are believed to be more than 80,000-years-old. And they were small. Exceedingly small.

The fingernail-size shells – widely regarded as some of the world’s earliest shell ornaments, were unearthed in a limestone cave in Eastern Morocco by archaeologists in 2007.

Up until that time, the 41 Nassarius shell beads found in Blomos Cave in South Africa almost 20 years earlier, had held the record by at least 10,000 years.

While in China and the far east, the earliest types of glass objects found are polychrome eye beads or dragonfly-eyed beads. The beads were discovered in burials made in the late Spring and Autumn of the early Warring States periods (early 5th century B.C.) up to late Warring State – early Western Han period.

Glass beads have also been found in the eighth and ninth-century B.C. burial tombs of the Western Zou dynasty.

With so much history attached to many of those pretty little things we know as beads, it is hard not to resist the urge to ponder about the intimate relationship which inevitably develops between the object and the wearer.

In some ethnic and tribal cultures some beads were worn throughout life and then buried with their owner for the afterlife.

In days gone by, beadmakers were limited by know-how and forced to use materials readily available to them such as shells and bone from which to create their ornaments.

It would not be unfair to say too, that there was less choice available than there is today, so artisans often had no choice but to improvise with the materials and colours on hand to produce those attractive objects.

By comparison, beadmakers today are spoilt for choice – the world over.

They are able to take advantage of state-of-the-art machinery and utilise cutting-edge technology to produce the multitude of beads – of all shapes and sizes to satisfy the phenomenal global appetite for those popular globules used in the production of jewellery.

Today’s beadmakers are also now able to utilise virtually every conceivable material including, metal, wood, glass, resin, semi-precious and precious stones and among others, bone.

Coupled with this knowledge and fascinated by the intrigue beads had on their perspectives, Marius and Rose set out to build a veritable repository of some of the world’s finest beads.

That adventure began in 1998 when they planned to do big things with little items.

So, for almost 20 years - throughout the “Naughties” and the “Twenty Tens” they sourced and hand-picked beads and findings from around the world to stock their two shops – ‘Broome Beads’ in the far north sub-tropical Kimberley community of Broome and Margaret River Beads located in the heart of the state’s largest premium wine producing region of Margaret River. Both shops were in Western Australia.