Rescued Beadwork

Rescued Beadwork
If you read my previous blog you know that I was looking for a home for my antique beadwork.  Not to sell but looking for it's rightful home.  It feels like another lifetime ago when I opened a native art and rare and unusual bead gallery in Fernandina Beach, in Florida. While I was there I amassed old beadwork that people gave to me or that I bought when traveling through St Louis, Lewis and Clark's gateway to the west.  Now my beaded Mocasins, belt and other old pieces of native beadwork (one pair of moccasins can be seen in the previous blog) were gently and carefully packed and shipped off to Sinte Gleska University (SGU). SGU rescued my beadwork.  I am so pleased to have found a home for these treasures.  I am told SGU plans on using these for students in their cultural programs and for research projects.  They said they would also be happy to take other items as well even if they do not belong to their ancestors as it is all part of the American Indian history. 

 I do have a few other items and some old beaded pincushions. 

During the 18th and early 19th centuries mission schools on the reservations taught sewing and embroidery skills to young native girls and women.  Pincushions  were made during that time.  Later they were made to sell as souvenirs.  My collection of pincushions is from the Caughnawaga reservation in Canada.  The name is a derivative of the word Mohawk word "Kahanwake" which means place of rapids.  The major Mohawk village was located near the Mohawk River rapids and when they were converted to the "Catholic Mohawks"  and moved to the Montreal area, they kept the name of their village on the river.

Sinte Gleska University is located on the Rosebud reservation in Mission, South Dakota and is Lakota-controlled and governed.  It is administered and run by people who are ancestrally connected to the Rosebud reservation and their native culture. 

I am just relieved that my old beaded items are where they belong, in good hands and will be honored and revered.  And, mostly kept safe from destruction.  Often old beadwork is torn apart to remove the antique seed beads.

Links you might be interested in:

If you would like to explore Sinte Gleska University here are some links:
http://www.sintegleska.edu/
Learn Lakota language here:
http://www.sintegleska.edu/speak-lakota-podcast.html
Or learn the Lakota word of the week here:
http://www.sintegleska.edu/lakota-word-of-the-week
See video of the Sinte Gleska buffalo ranch here:
http://www.sintegleska.edu/buffalo-ranch.html

Visit Sinte Gleska YouTube channel to see events such as the Founders Day event and maybe watch the "hat and boot dance" or listen to lectures on Lakota "thought and philosophy":
https://www.youtube.com/user/sintegleskautube

Well, here we are in 2015.  Seems like yesterday when I first began neglecting my blogs. Yikes, it was July 2013. Yes, I have more than one blog.   Sort of crazy; but, there are just so many things I am mad about doing, creating, writing.   I always thought that I tend to be more creative when I am extremely busy and I tend to get lazy when business winds down. But that didn't work for me this time.   I took a granted position in 2013 that was only for one year. They gave me a computer, a project, then sent me on my way and I didn't look up until it was finished.  It is finished... so here I am again.  Hoping that I might keep it going this time. 

Today I am attempting to get back on track.  I contacted a friend on Rosebud Reservation to see if they knew someone who would be interested in my fully beaded moccasins.  Their estimated circa is from late 1800 to around 1910.  It's important to me to find homes for these.  Otherwise, they will eventually end up in the wrong hands and be taken apart by someone who collects old beads.  Just can't let that happen.  

There is something sad or nostalgic that I feel particularly for the red pair. The sole of the red pair was cut from a parfleche.  A parfleche is a rawhide box or case that the plains Indians made out of rawhide and painted with earth pigments in designs similar to beadwork.  They made them into bags and boxes and used them to store personal items. When they moved camp they would use them to transport their items on a travois often pulled by dogs or horses.  You can see the parfleche design on the inside of the sole. 

When I think about the sacrifice made, by destroying the parfleche, for the sole of the moccasin, I think about the soul of the person must have been desperate to create these moccasins.   I imagine he felt the need to dance for his people and their struggles and, of course, by 1874 buffalo were rapidly disappearing so the rawhide was probably not available. 

I compare the demise of the buffalo to an embargo...Take away the buffalo and you take away the Indian's ability to survive and resist and instead you are "..coercing them on reservations, and compelling them to begin to adopt the habits of civilization." (The Military and United States Indian Policy, p. 171)

Crazy Crow a popular supplier of native crafts has tips on their website on how to create your own parfleche.  You can find directions and everything you need here. You can even find buffalo rawhide at Crazy Crow ....which is pretty pricey. There are every expanding herds of buffalo today and, as in the past, all of the buffalo is used and buffalo hides and rawhide can be found to recreate history. 



Hunkpapa Lakota (Standing Rock)
National Museum of the American Indian

In the meantime, I will wait to hear if I have a home for the beaded moccasins, beaded belt and beaded cuffs.

Links:
National Museum of the American Indian  
ICE Case Study: Buffalo Harvest
The Extermination of the American Buffalo
Crazy Crow Trading Post 


Some good reading about that time period and the demise of the buffalo.  
The  Military and United States Indian Policy 1865-1903 Robert Wooster, Yale University Press, 1988. 
Buffalo Days: Forty Years in the Old West: the Personal Narrative of a Cattleman Indian Fighter, and Army Officer Colonel Homer W.Wheeler. The Bobbs-Merrill Company, 1925.
Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custser and the Western Military Frontier, Robert Utley. University of Oklahoma Press, 1988.

My favorite read is by Frederick E. Hoxie, Director ofD'Arcy McNickle Center for the History of the American Indian.
you can get it here: 

Indians in American History

Pray, Eat and Bead

My life feels as if it’s in a holding pattern.  Everything I start abruptly ends like a bridge to nowhere.  It's the super moon some say and, of course, the planets are changing and setting up new alignments.  I decide that while I wait patiently for something to move, I will pray, eat and bead. 

Beaded mocassins c. late 1800

 I sit in the middle of the floor and empty every plastic tub filled to the brim with beads and beaded treasures.  I sort and sort --11º here, 13º there and everything else over there somewhere.  Then I realize I am missing some colors.  Before I left for the Ukraine as a Peace Corps volunteer I loaded up my car with beads and drove them to the reservation at Old Town, Me.  They have a cultural center and I knew the elders would make use of them as well as teach the children.  I knew the colors I had kept for myself could work in a new project but I also knew that I would have to reorder some more of the old colors.

Among the piles of beads I find size15º, 18º and even some 24º.  These beads are so small they look like tiny grains of salt.  I thought I had sold all of these but luckily I kept some for myself.  Of course, I have no idea how to use them. Some are so small that needles will not fit through the hole.  These are beads that haven’t been made since the 1800s.  I love looking at them and imagining what it must have been like when glass bead making was a cottage industry and ships with their hulls full of beads traveled the seas in search of exotic spices and fabrics. 

 

As a bead addict, I had to have those missing colors.  I found my old supplier, Elliot Greene, online.  They were my favorite supplier of the old style seed beads sold on hanks by the kilo.  They knew just what you were talking about when you asked for corn yellow or Cheyenne pink.  I am passionate about my seed beads and part of the allure is to make sure they are as close as possible to the old seed beads in color and sold on hanks.  A hank contains 12 strands of beads about 20 inches long.  They are sold by the kilo or ½ kilo.  A kilo is about 4000 beads. 

I decide I can’t wait.  I have to have these colors--I dial Elliot Greene.  Like everything else, things have changed and Elliot Greene has sent their inventory to a company called Har-man.  Since I was a client  in the past when I had the gallery, they told me who to speak with and they also said that Har-man was closed for a week.  Ahh, that bridge to no where--I must wait.

I never thought I minded change, always thought I was flexible and flowed with life; but, I have come to believe that some things like make-up, perfume and bras should never change or become obsolete.  You have to start all over again.  That might not be a bad thing—maybe that’s why I feel stuck—perhaps I am resisting starting all over again.  While I pray and eat I will ponder that thought about change and spend the next few days climbing over the beads spread out across the floor.   


June 27, 2013
New Hampshire

Resources:
Elliot Greene
Har-man

Beads, Beads-- my closets are filled with beads.

Whoa... still adjusting... such a culture shock being here after living in the Poltava, Ukraine  for almost 3 years in the Peace Corps, I am now in a tiny space all my own and have I got beads. Finally, I unpacked my beads.  Such a passion I have for those old trade beads.  There's something about the Lewis and Clark era that I just love.  I have cleared the decks-- I am ready to begin-- now what will my first beading project be?

In Poltava, I saw the most beautiful and intricate beadwork.  It was very inspiring to find pictures of that beadwork on Pinterest.  Even more inspiring was that I could read actually the description of the beadwork with my very  basic Russian language skills.

Some people have closets filled with quilting supplies, fabric, craft supplies, scrapbooking supplies... but I have closets filled with rare and very old beads.  

Here are just some pictures of my beads.  You can find these beads in the Picard Trade Bead Museum

Small Chevrons, Dutch Blues, White Hearts, and Feather Beads

These are early 1900 glass tear drop and butterscotch glass tubes.

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Resources you might enjoy:

Russian Blues: Faceted and Fancy Beads for the West African Trade
White Hearts, Feather and Eye Beads From the West African Trade

Faith and Hope and Beads

Beading always felt very therapeutic, as if I was in a meditative practice.  When I do beadwork the hours float away.    I become so engrossed watching colorful patterns emerge as I weave tiny seed beads together.  Therefore, it didn't surprise me at all when I first learned that the word “bead” is derived from the Anglo Saxon word  "bede” which means “prayer”  and the word “bidden” which means “to pray.”  Apparently, in the Middle Ages when everything of beauty such as jewelry was considered sinful, the prayer bead became acceptable and allowed as a way for the devoted to count their prayers.  In fact, the poem The Faerie Queen , a  medieval allegory written by Edmund Spenser and published between 1590 and 1609, a symbol for Elizabeth I. includes this verse “All night she spent in bidding of her bedes, And all the day in doing good and Godly deedes.”  

The earliest depiction of the use of beads in ritual prayers can be seen on Hindu sandstone sculptures dating from around 185 B.C. – 320 A.D.  It is not known exactly when Christians developed the use of the rosary.  Dubin notes in the History of Beads that Christianity “was the last of the major religions to employ prayer beads in an important ritualistic role.”  Perhaps the use of beads developed in independently or as a result of contact with Muslims in the eight-century in the Holy Land.  However, there is no denying how small shinny objects capture our hearts.  For me it is the feel of old beads, the smooth patina from their mysterious journey as they pass from hand to hand, generation to generation into the present time. 

My favorite beads for prayer and meditation are beads I found in a small antique shop about 12 years ago.  It is more difficult to find old beads today as they are becoming rare and hard to find as more people collect them. So naturally, I couldn't resist having these in my collection.  From my research it seems they are Islamic prayer beads, Subha.  There are 99 beads on the strand with one elongated bead.  They are ebony inlaid with silver which had a design that is worn thin from the many years of use.   

The amber prayer beads I received from a neighbor. There are 33 beads that slide easily along a chain.  They originally belonged to neighbor, a woman from Eastern Europe, perhaps she brought them back with her on a visit. I doubt that they are very old but they are beautiful.   The Eastern Orthodox Church uses prayer beads with a 33, 50, or 100 bead count and the Islamic Subha also uses 33 or 99 bead count.

A set of rosary beads was made for me by a customer who often purchased beads in my gallery.  She would take them to Rome to be blessed, and then beaded them into rosaries to give away.  These beads are called Czechoslovakian hand pressed gold star.  If you look closely you can see the indentation where the gold star was pressed into the warm glass bead before it cooled.

Links you might enjoy. 

Here is a link to some very beautiful prayer beads and information on how each is used:  Prayer Beads World

At this site you can pray the rosary with people around the world.:  
Pray the Rosary

Islamic Prayer Beads: SubhaWhat is a Mala: How to use Tibetan Prayer Beads

Read the Faerie Queene online:
The Faerie Queene, Book 1, Canto 10The Faerie Queene, Book 1; Book 5

Info about Worry Beads:
Science News Article: Worry BeadsNew York Times Article: Whatever the Purpose of Worry Beads...
Create your own prayer bead:
A String and a Prayer: How to Make and Use Prayer Beads
Bead One, Pray Too: A Guide to Making and Using Prayer Beads Bead One, Pray Too: A Guide to Making and Using Prayer Beads
The History of Beads: From 100,000 B.C. to the Present, Revised and Expanded Edition 

Bead Obsession: The Beginning

My obsession with shinny glass beads began when I was a little girl—about 5 or 6 years old—my grandmother gave me some beads.  I remember very clearly because it caused a lot of discontent. When my uncles and aunt discovered I had the beads they ran into the kitchen questioning her.  They were not happy that she had given me Poppa Burke’s beads.  But, I remember she said very loudly, “I want her to have them.”  I must have wanted to make sure that no one took them away from me so I hid them away.  At night sometimes I would take them out and turn the smooth glass ovals round in my fingers studying the beautiful designs, every bead was different and different on every side.  The colors swirled together and looked like flowers, faces and spoke to me of a world beyond.  I put them away and for many years those beads didn't see the light of day.

One day I took them out and hung them from the rear view mirror in my car.   A friend just happened to see them and exclaimed… “Get those beads off there,“ she said, “Someone will steal them.”   Once again they went into hiding.    It was when I opened an art gallery that specialized in native arts and rare and unusual beads that I brought them out.  I strung them and wore them for a while; but, they were to fragile and began to show some wear  because I was constantly touching them—they were my link to a far distant past that brought me to this time and place in my life. Without realizing it, I had been on a lifelong bead hunt to discover their mystery and the stories behind the beads I had been entrusted with so very long ago.

I don’t know why my grandmother insisted I have the beads or why an old Abenaki Indian, Poppa Burke, gave them to her or how he was related to our family or even why through the years I kept them hidden and safe.  We live many lives in this life time as we search for the life that is our destiny.  I didn’t know it at the time but those beads sent me on a life long journey  and through it all I have collected beads from around the world beads used in the trade era—old beads, glass beads, stone beads, bone beads, wire wound beads, Venetian millefiori.  Beads called crow beads, seed beads, Charlotte's, eye beads, skunk beads, Russian blues, white hearts, feather beads, melon beads, chevron beads


Visit www.etsy.com to view some of my beads.  More beads will be added in the future.

A great read as well as a resource.  
The History of Beads: From 100,000 B.C. to the Present, Revised and Expanded Edition

What fun coming soon.... Beads, Beads and more beads... History, lore and more about those rare precious little beads.