Beady beards?

June 18, 2012 5:15 PM

What culture(s) is the practice of putting beads or string around your beard from? (Just to clarify, I mean putting the facial hair into a 'ponytail' at the chin and then stringing the beads on.)

I know I have seen this before, but this week I saw two people with their beard in beads and one person who had wrapped it in that string people use to weave bracelets. His had alternating stripes of red, white and black.

And it got me curious! So, is there a name for this kind of thing? Is it from somewhere in particular?

Maybe I used bad search terms, but I couldn't find anything about it on the web, except how to do it.

posted by abirdinthehand to Grab Bag (3 answers total)

17th and 18th century pirates were often drawn or painted with braided, beaded, and/or beribboned beards (see the roughly contemporary engraving on Wikipedia's Blackbeard article.
posted by Sidhedevil at 5:25 PM on June 18, 2012

I can't get more specific than Afro-Caribbean, but I have seen guys with this beard style in the Afro-Caribbean neighborhood I live near. Of course, this could be a personal style thing, and not something from the larger culture of the community.
posted by ocherdraco at 5:29 PM on June 18, 2012

My stepfather wears his beard in this style. He is white, in his sixties and from Essex and the East End of London. Knowing his interests, I would say his inspiration was old pictures of pirates (and maybe newer ones too). I can ask him tonight.
posted by daisyk at 7:55 AM on June 19, 2012