From one of my trips to Rapid City, SD, I posted pictures of some amazing paper art at Prairie Edge. That same trip I photographed the bead gallery at the store.
Recently, I learned more about this collection, from Prairie Edge's monthly newsletter.
Here's an example of Plains Indian beadwork that might've used Venetian beads (don't know the date). It's in the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City.
Recently, I learned more about this collection, from Prairie Edge's monthly newsletter.
The Societa Veneziana Conterie was a bead-making company in Murano originally chartered in 1898. It was a consortium of sixteen bead-making families that eventually closed its doors in 1992, when it sold out its entire stock which had been accumulating for nearly a century. Prairie Edge first purchased beads from the company in 1983, then again in 1984 and received the final purchase in 1992-1993. At one point, sixteen semi-trucks showed up in one day at the warehouse, all filled to the brim with beads. This purchase alone consisted of over 210 TONS of beads.
This is the largest collection of handmade Italian beads as far as shapes, colours and sizes in the world. To date, over 100,000 kilos have been sorted by size and colour.... Another 75,000 kilos are still mixed, some sorted by size but not by colour...This collection is unrivaled for sheer size, for subtlety and gradation of colour as well as for the range of sizes and finishes available. The extremely small (18/0 to 24/0) beads were all made by hand. Modern machinery cannot reproduce beads in these sizes.
Italian glass beads are some of the earliest, most enduring and most widely disseminated forms of currency and ornamentation on earth. Millions of kilos of beads were exported annually for centuries.
Here's an example of Plains Indian beadwork that might've used Venetian beads (don't know the date). It's in the Sioux Indian Museum in Rapid City.
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