Where did these beads come from?

October 24, 2006 8:19 AM

This past weekend, the family and I went to Chesapeake Beach (Brownie Beach) in southern Maryland. As we were looking for sharks teeth and other fossils, a woman next to us was telling us about the glass beads she was finding. These apparently were from a shipwreck from the late 1700's and were "trade goods" from England. I want to know more about them. obviously..

We found about 15 of them. a few were longish (maybe a 1/4 inch long) cobalt blue or black, a square green one and rest were regular seed bead sized in yellow, red, orange.

So does anyone have any more info on either the beads (the most i found out was most of them were actually made in Venice Italy) or the shipwreck. Any thing would be good because Google has not been our friend with this one.

posted by ShawnString to Society & Culture (5 answers total)

I have a string of these collected from various sites in South Carolina. Without a picture I can't be sure, but I'm pretty sure they are sand cast trade beads made in many locales from the 1700 through today. It's a fairly crude form of casting where glass is poured into trenches in sand. Here's a website on the process, albeit in a modern format. I see them for sale on eBay fairly often, and turns up plenty of hits for "sand cast glass beads." Hope this gives you a bit of a start.

I'm afraid I can't be much more specific as they are fairly common and most of their historical value is in where you find them.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:57 AM on October 24, 2006

Ack. Sorry about the formatting.
posted by 1f2frfbf at 8:58 AM on October 24, 2006

Response by poster: they arent like that. they are very small and very smooth. not rough. the colors are very vibrant and clear.
posted by ShawnString at 9:41 AM on October 24, 2006

See if you can get in touch with the historical society for the town.

If you can't, you may be able to get in touch with one of the more major colonial-coastal historical societies. Jamestown VA would be a good place to start.
posted by LobsterMitten at 10:42 AM on October 24, 2006

It may be hard to believe, but there's actually a Bead Museum in DC. Maybe they could tell you something?
posted by MrMoonPie at 12:24 PM on October 24, 2006