24-inch strand of Gold Glass Beads in sizes ranging from 5 to 12mm with most in the 6-8mm range. There are a variety of shapes as well as connected segments which are typical of the manufacturing process.
Gold glass beads are made by wrapping clear blown glass beads with gold leaf and then covering it with another layer of clear glass, so the layer of gold foil is preserved between two layers of glass.
Most beads on this strand are in remarkably good condition, but those few that are broken actually offer some interesting insights into how the beads were made
There are also two very unusual aqua colored beads
Gold Glass beads, also known as Gold-in-Glass, Gold Foil or Gold Sandwich beads evolved in Ancient Egypt and Rhodes (a Greek Island) during the 3rd century BC and continued to be made for about 1500 years, disappearing in the 13th century.
Most gold glass beads on the market have been attributed to Roman workshops between 300 BC to 400 AD, but new research has discovered another earlier center for gold glass to China during the Han Dynasty (206 BC-220 AD), however these Chinese bead techniques are believed to have originated in in Bali, Indonesia.
That explains why gold glass beads can be found in SE Asia, which is where I bought mine in the early 1990s. Because it cost less than the gold glass beads in the European and US antiques market, Asian gold glass was assumed to be newer. Now it seems that the Asian gold glass actually pre-dates the Roman!
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