New Special Offer through April 18

I've been thinking of making little placards for my sales tables telling the history of beads. Beadwork is an important part of some Native American artwork -- some of the beaded and quilled dresses from (I think?) the Southwest are bloody amazing, and the ancestors of the Incas did some interesting inlaid sculpture with them.

In the ancient Near East, many lapis and other gemstone beads have been found in excavations of the great walled cities of times past. A group of bored graduate students studying ancient Assyria once tried, with near approximations of the Bronze Age tools they found, to hand-drill a gemstone bead. It took about two and a half working days. I think the method of drilling must have been lost to time. The wealth to support full-time bead drillers would have been extremely limited, and beads are too numerous in the archaeological record for that to be the case. Maybe one day we'll discover how ancient gemstone beads were actually drilled. Personally, I think that would be incredibly exciting.


Available here.

In the next couple of weeks, when you purchase any item containing gemstone from my Etsy shop, you'll get 20% off any second piece of equal or lesser value. You can use this offer as many times as you want -- so, if you order a $25 necklace and a $12 bracelet that both contain gemstone, you'll get 20% off any other two items that are $25 and $12 or less.

And don't forget to check out Ballet Llama, M's and my joint shop! We're listing new items, including miniature embellished top hats, polymer clay art and Victorian-inspired collar-choker necklaces, and you can combine shipping between the two shops!