Where do seed Beads Come From?

Today, I am going to focus on mainly seed beads, and the wonderful types you can find in abundance.  I have loved glass seed  beads for my entire life, and love the wonderful art beads that are so very abundant today, but when I was a kid... beads were pretty blahsé. I mean, there were nice beads around, my mother had a strand of crystals that were bicone and nicely cut, but other than that, they were just...well, pretty blah.
The seed beads at that time were pretty generic, mostly coming out of Czechoslovakia, and weren't that great about being uniform. Sometimes it would take hours upon hours of sifting through seeds to find enough to use for a project.
I actually really started bead weaving and working in other ways with seeds in the early 1970s, I was very young, and my aunt and grandmother lovingly showed me how to use a bead loom. I graduated to off loom and incorporating beads into crochet work.

crocheted rope with 10/0 seeds-Marie Covert

This was about the time when my mother made some really nice crochet rope,  worked in seed beads or small pearls. Some were very long ropes and she knotted them, leaving them long, some she made into actual necklaces. My aunts also made these, as well as my grandmother, but my grandmother's skill was more in woven work. I wish I had more examples of my families work. I never thought about it not being around... now I have only a few pieces that I can show...and they are just simple pieces. One aunt made the most amazing pieces with luster coated seed beads in patterns that were extraordinary... alas, I don't own one piece.

 I inherited a box of some of my grandmother's beads, in it was a box that I later discovered the origin. At one time, the government handed out these boxes to Native women, they contained vials of seed beads. I am not sure the reasoning of the handouts, but I love that I have the box. Sadly, it is packed away in the garage along with other memorabilia that should be displayed.

triangle seed beads embellished with glass, copper beads-Marie Covert

Glass seed beads have been indispensable to  jewelry artists for centuries, prized for their beauty, size and embroidery use, they have been sought after, used as currency and fortunes won with. Up until 1890s, there were beads that were the size of a grain of sand, measured as 24°. This size of seed bead is now considered as an antique, and it is quite a rare find, and quite expensive.
 Native Americans have used seed beads in artwork since their introduction by European traders. Beads were often traded for skins, fur, and meat. Natives were happy with the trades, and used the beads for headbands, necklaces and  embellishment to their belts, clothing, pouches, shoes, as well as to unique additions to spears, pipes, noise makers, and drums. Before the introduction of the glass beads, Natives used different natural forms of decorations, such as quills and actual seeds with drilled holes, shells, bone and even fruit pits. Beadwork is now synonymous with Native Americans, no matter what tribe they come from.

peyote stitch using square seed beads-Marie Covert

Beadwork from tribe to tribe differs in style and execution, though the boundaries are blurred a bit in modern times. some of the types of beadwork are: Overlaid stitch, which is made by stringing beads and affixing with another string to a surface, usually leather. This method can incorporate use of different colored beads, strung in order to make a design in the finished work. This method is widely used, especially to cover large backgrounds. The second stitch is the "lazy stitch" aptly named since there is no stringing and counting involved. The beads are threaded right onto the needle and string, then passed through the backing material, no second thread is used. This is a fast way to lay down beads, it gives the rows of beads a ribbed look, and is good for geometric shapes. This method was used mainly by the plains tribes

 The third main stitch is 'couching', a variation of the 'lazy stitch', it entails stringing beads onto the thread, stitching through the fabric, and then pulling tight the thread, so that the beads arch a bit, thus giving it a raised effect. This was used by Northeastern tribes. Some use a method similar to this, but lay down a layer of beads first to give it a base to lay on, raising it to a higher level than simply beading rows side by side, which does give some support, but it will not hold up if pressure is applied to the beadwork.

I personally learned to use a heddle loom, which is used primarily by the Sac and Fox tribe and some of the Northern tribes such as the Winnebago and Menomini tribes. This method uses a loom with a heddle that is made of wood, that every other warp thread passes through.  The heddle is moved upwards, allowing a space to be made between, half the warp threads are up and half are down, thus a thread strung with beads can be passed through, the heddle is lowered, and the thread is passed back through, the heddle is raised, and the thread with beads is passed back through... and so on.. until the length of ribbon is made.

Chief Keokuk: Chief of the Sacs and Foxes, painted by

Charles Bird King, 1837

  Today,  many people use this technique, since it creates a very sturdy finished product and provides very even rows. Creating designs is very easy this way...Click here to see a picture of a rigid heddle, this is an old heddle, bought by a museum in 1928  from Alstadhaug, Nordland

Seed beads are considered 'seed' because of their small size, larger 'seeds' are considered "crow beads", 'trade beads' , and 'pony beads' then 'seed beads' from largest to smallest. The size and shape are varying, the "crow beads" are largest, usually used in knitting with beads or added to crochet and knitting, pony beads are used a lot in craft work, smaller seeds are used in bead weaving, bead embroidery and jewelry as additions to larger beads.

by Marie Covert-peyote stitch using triangle seed beads

Seed beads, no matter what size, share similar shapes. They tend to be rounded, cylindrical forms that are similar to a sphere. There are other shaped seed beads though. Round, tubes, triangles, squares...

Cellini Spiral stitch-Marie Covert

Today, most seed beads come from Czechoslovakia, Japan, India or China. The main difference in the beads is the quality... the evenness of the center hole, the finish, the uniformity of size. If you are working on a freeflowing sculpture, you may or may not want perfectly sized beads. Some bead weaving actually benefits from odd sizes of beads, like Cellini stitched rope, which is a tubular peyote stitch that uses varying sizes of seed beads in a pattern that creates an undulating spiral... it actually benefits
from the odd sizes and sometimes oddly shaped beads because they fit into the gaps of the rope and even out the stitches.

8/0 seed beads in peyote stitch-Marie Covert

When you are working with a flat peyote stitch, you really want a very even, very uniform size, whether it is a classic shaped round bead or the more tubular delica, or even the triangle seed bead. The size needs to be perfectly even or the stitch pattern will vary, giving waves or undulating patterns. For this reason, I prefer Japanese seed beads. For flat Peyote stitch, I really prefer triangle seed beads. I had a teacher, Liz Smith that taught me to work with them. I love that they come in very wonderful colors and metallic finishes, and are always so very precise. I prefer Toho beads, myself, working with them is wonderful. To me, they are probably the best at quality control.  But I have to admit.. when I am working with a new pattern, or just doing something free form, or working in Cellini... I use cheap beads.  Don't hate me..  I started using the Czech beads in my youth that were not always identical, so I learned to sort through beads, which is rather calming. I also like that I can get a lot of beads to play around with... and if I like a design, I'll buy expensive beads to replicate the work.

Czech glass seed beads have been made in that region of the world for many years, and especially before World War II, the business was thriving.  France and Italy, Holland  also have or have had glass makers that produce seed beads.

The manufacture of seed beads has varied over the centuries, modern methods of manufacture are pretty uniform, though. The use of glass rods that are softened to a red hot, they are then fed into a stamping die, that stamps the glass into the basic shape, then reciprocating needles are fed through the glass to create the holes.

egg basket by Tina Koyama

Among the shapes of seed beads, there is the classic rounded shape, a tubular or cylindrical shape;
Charlottes-which is a round with flat faces;
Triangle bead-which has three flat sides; bugle bead- is a long cylinder, sometimes with flatened side or sides;
Twisted Bugle bead- the bugle is twisted so that the side makes a spiral, but the bead is flat;
Square seed beads-as the name implies, it has four flat sides.

One small tidbit of information:  The recipe for making jet black beads was lost during World War I. Something you would think was so simple... but... if you look at a black bead in the light today, it will show as a very dark purple.