A former professor and museum director offers a fascinating, in-depth look at the culture and history of beaded objects around the world. From a beaded dress found in an ancient Egyptian tomb to the beaded fringe on a 1920s Parisian flapper’s hem, humans throughout history have used beading as a way to express, adorn, and tell a story. Bol explores beadwork across the world and through the ages, showing how beading has taken on many different styles, forms, and purposes for different cultures. She looks at children’s clothing, puberty ceremonies, burials, emblems of social status and leadership, festivals, and many other cultural occasions that involve the use of beadwork. Images of artifacts and heirlooms as well as photography of people and their beadwork enhance the scholarship of this book for a beautiful, enlightening addition to art, history, multicultural collections everywhere.

This uniquely designed book and kit with a detachable plexiglass spine contains nearly 2,000 colorful beads and instructions to make a variety of jewelry items while learning about African culture. 100 illustrations.

For over 150 years, Tlingit women artists have beaded colorful, intricately beautiful designs on moccasins, dolls, octopus bags, tunics, and other garments. Painful Beauty suggests that at a time when Indigenous cultural practices were actively being repressed, beading supported cultural continuity, demonstrating Tlingit women’s resilience, strength, and power. Beadwork served many uses, from the ceremonial to the economic, as women created beaded pieces for community use and to sell to tourists. Like other Tlingit art, beadwork reflects rich artistic visions with deep connections to the environment, clan histories, and Tlingit worldviews. Contemporary Tlingit artists Alison Bremner, Chloe French, Shgen Doo Tan George, Lily Hudson Hope, Tanis S’eiltin, and Larry McNeil foreground the significance of historical beading practices in their diverse, boundary-pushing artworks. Working with museum collection materials, photographs, archives, and interviews with artists and elders, Megan Smetzer reframes this often overlooked artform as a site of historical negotiations and contemporary inspirations. She shows how beading gave Tlingit women the freedom to innovate aesthetically, assert their clan crests and identities, support tribal sovereignty, and pass on cultural knowledge. Painful Beauty is the first dedicated study of Tlingit beadwork and contributes to the expanding literature addressing women’s artistic expressions on the Northwest Coast.

“This fantastic starting point for those beginning in the art of beadwork aptly covers the long record of the art form throughout the world.”—Booklist French mourning wreaths‚ Ukrainian Easter eggs, Norwegian bodices, Chinese slippers, Pakistani hair tassels, Egyptian belly-dancing outfits, Maasai wedding dresses, Sioux moccasins . . . from Greenland to Bali, beadwork from all over the world is illustrated and its history revealed. The earliest drawn glass beads were produced from around 200 BC in various locations in India and exported for centuries along the major trade routes to Africa and Asia. From the sixteenth century on, beads made in Europe became highly desirable trade items and spread throughout the world. This book is organized into five sections, with more than forty topics in all. Each of four main regional sections—Africa; the Americas; Europe; and Asia, Oceania, and the Arabian Gulf—outlines the history of beads in that area before examining production in detail. A fifth section surveys techniques, from brick stitch and herringbone weave to lazy stitch and three-dimensional structures. Includes information on collecting and conserving beadwork and a list of public collections around the world.

Full-color photographs illustrate the rich art of Native American beadwork in this combination practical how-to and coffee-table book. A historical perspective explains how and why beadwork is produced and what techniques are popular today. Clear and concise directions show how to produce beadwork in the Native American tradition, including lane stitch, loom, applique, gourd stitch, and Comanche brickwork. An illustrated gallery showcases historical and contemporary beadwork. Also included is information on research, tools, and materials.

"By applying the time-honoured techniques and traditions of Japanese embroidery, beautiful beaded motifs are brought to life. Discover a whole new world of beading through the pages of this superb book which includes detailed step-by-step diagrams, full descriptions of the techniques involved and fabulous photography. Nine stunning projects are included ranging from simple beginner designs to a sumptuous evening bag."--

Looks at a variety of beads produced around the world, discusses their religious and social aspects, and describes beaded clothing in primitive societies. Reprint.

Study of the Native American beadwork collection owned by the painter E.I. Couse

Today as in the past Kutchin women use beads in evocative and beautiful patterns to ornament clothing for family and friends, and items to be sold. Beadwork is the form a woman will often choose when a most special gift is called for; the beaded object is love made visible. Among these subarctic Athapaskan people, beadwork today continues a tradition that has been important for well over a century. Both changes and continuities were evident in that tradition when, in 1982, Kate Duncan, an art historian, and Eunice Carney, a Kutchin elder and beadworker, visited Kutchin communities in Alaska and the Yukon Territory, carrying photographs of older beadwork now in museum collections and talking with people about the art. This new edition, with an expanded section of color plates and an updated introduction, brings back into print the product of their effort. The narrative traverses the history of Kutchin beadwork, beginning with early regional differences and work that exists now only in memory, extending to the last decades of the twentieth century. Beadworkers speak throughout. Eunice Carney has a section to herself, in which she talks about her life and shares patterns from her personal design tablet.