This necklace has been on the list of stuff to photograph and post for a long, long time.^[1] The man who gave me the bulk of the beads—powdered cast tubular beads he purchased in Africa—now has dementia and no longer knows who I am, though I vividly recall him giving me an assortment of beads and pendants as souvenirs.

Necklace measures 19" from back to tip of tassel. Opening 28". Shell measures 1.75" at its widest point. Sterling silver, copper, shell, powdered cast African glass, other glass, carnelian, malachite, tree agate (epidote?), green aventurine, ‘red aventurine’. strung on plastic coated cable, early to mid 1990s?

The striped beads in particular are of African origin, though not all of them were souvenirs; I mixed in some other, similar beads. The striped green, orange and white sand^[2] cast tubular beads are particularly fine examples of the type. By European (or even Chinese) lampworking standards, they're rather crude beads, but the technique is very low-tech. Since they have quite large holes, they're double strung in order to get the tubes to lay evenly on the stringing material.

Closeup, reverse. Photographed 5mar2016.

When my dad's oldest brother celebrated his 45th wedding anniversary, I collected some bits of shell along the Virginia Beach shore, reasoning that it would be nice to unite these two sets of mementos. Wire-wrapping the shell also addressed the very real problem of a focal that co-ordinated with the African beads. IIRC, the white seed beads may also have come from Africa.

The palette of beads, for me, is relatively limited,^[3] but I was pretty happy with the piece.

Unless otherwise noted, text, image and objects depicted therein copyright 1996--present sylvus tarn.