“Beads may carry with them centuries of history, having crossed many continents, seas, and oceans and having passed through innumerable hands.  En route, they become worn and chipped with age but every bruise tells the story of an adventure in a long and eventful journey.”  - The Tribal Bead

            Beadwork is one of the most dominant art traditions for many cultures in Africa.  Their significance, colors, and qualities shape the expressiveness of beads.  Dating back to the 11th century AD, beads have played an intricate part of trade, society, and adornment  throughout Africa.  Their use communicates cultural values spiritually and physically in a symbolic language . This language manifested into many forms can express social rank, artistic expression, age and politics to other community members as well as to the ancestors.

            The origins of African beads will probably always remain unanswered due to their impermanence and portability.  Though we do know that beads have been an item in trade since early times.  As of now, the earliest known African beads, found in Libya and Sudan, were made from ostrich shells and date to circa 10,000 BCE (Drewal  1998:34).  “In the first millennium BCE in various areas of the continent, especially during the fifth to ninth centuries, complex and stratified societies developed in urban centers under the centralized control of wealthy minorities.  In eastern Africa, for instance, seashells, cowries, and glass beads were found at the earliest Iron Age sites in Zimbabwe (300-400 BCE) and a regular pattern of glass bead imports is recognizable by the end of the first millennium BCE.  The uniformity of these beads suggests a single source, probably India” (Drewal  1998:34). The cowrie shells found throughout Africa, from the Eastern side of the Republic of Congo to Western Senegal, illustrates the distributing effect of trade within Africa.  The shells were originally collected from the islands off the coast of East Africa, and have always been valued as a medium of exchange.  Thus, with the shell being a visual object representing wealth and prestige, it is found on kings robes, royal thrones, headdresses etc. possibly creating a standard for the importance of beads representing status and increasing the desire to be adorned by them.  The broad importance of the beads could have also increased the acceptance of the Europeans coming to Africa to do trade.

            Dating back as far as the 15th century, the Portuguese traveled to Africa by sea followed by many other European countries.  Discovering the gold and ivory objects already being produced, prominently by the West Africans, encouraged an intrusion of Europeans that sparked trade interest with the Africans.  The Europeans were quick to note the exchange value, portability, and irresistible allure of small brightly colored beads.  As the world-wide market for African riches grew, so did the glassmakers in Venice to design and produce colorful beads exclusively for trade (Gordon  1976). Glass beads were valued in Africa, not because Africans were fooled into believing them to be precious stones, but because they were the products of an exotic technology, brought by a foreign land.  Beads, therefore, became precious in their own right and were soon linked to whatever was valued in the cultures of the people who owned and crafted them into a variety of objects to be worn according to custom (Schoeman  1996:2).  Throughout the 16th century Venice was the European source of beads for trade, until a group of expatriate Italian glassmakers who settled in Amsterdam began teaching their skills to the Dutch.  By the 18th century Holland emerged as an important center of bead production (Gordon  1976: 2)

            To the people of Africa, beads signify more than mere elements of decoration, they are an essential component of everyday dress and life:  Members of numerous African tribes identify and recognize one another by their distinctive styles of dress and adornment.  A person’s family lineage, religious sect, occupation, status in society, age grade, or marital status may be revealed in elements of personal jewelry or clothing.  Shells and bones are sewn on clothing in many parts of Africa to symbolize health, fertility, and beauty (Gordon  1976:4).  The use of decoration as a distinction in society is a thread that can be found all over the continent, though specifics to exact meanings vary from region to region.   One example is a transition from one level in society to the next, which is often accompanied by a change in clothing and adornment, often made from or decorated with beads.  Beaded aprons from the Northern Cameroon and Southern Chad area are an object of this process, indicating a change in a woman’s life in society whether it be denoting widowhood, marital status or initiation into woman hood. 

            The art of beading, whether a necklace, bracelet, statue covered with beads, or a headdress in composition expresses its own meaning.  Yet each bead itself, “a colored and coloring form that reflects, transmits, and transforms light- also transforms the objects and the persons it adorns”(Drewal 1998:17).  Relating back to the beaded aprons there are predominately two forms of beads to create the intricate designs.  One being the cowrie shell, which is a natural bead offers infinite varieties of ornamentation and personal embellishment. Their delicate natural female form is associated with fertility.  The other beads on the aprons are the European glass beads which are widely used in Africa.  These beads called “Trade Wind” are small single-colored glass beads that were sold by the pound in Africa.  The ships which brought them in the early 16th century came with the trade winds, giving the beads their name (Gordon  1976: 20)

            Colors move those who experience them, They visually can take you and your mind to a satisfying place.  Incorporated into art and spiritual decoration as well as decoration for every day life, brilliant and unique, the beads play an important role to body language.  Inanimate objects that, whether created by nature or man, have spiritual force.  This is an attribute to why African art often has such a strong aesthetic presence, even if they are not technically sophisticated (Drewal  1998:17) It is sometimes difficult to decide whether beadwork is a craft, an art, a communicational system similar in principle to a written language or part of a symbolic code used for their own purposes by specialists in traditional magic. Though a single-colored or multi-colored bead of fine workmanship may have just enough of a visual impact to stand on its own in meaning, to stand out and be recognized by others. 

            African beadwork is meant to be noticed.  As Angela Fisher has written in Africa Adorned, beads say “look at me!” They range from the layers of colorful necklaces worn in Kenya to a minimal beaded apron in Cameroon.  To draw further attention, the beads are often accompanied by sound effects: the rattling of cowrie shells, for example (Dubin  1987: 149) The historical value of beads is evident. They reveal an important tradition as old as man himself.  As they have for thousands of years, beads continue to enhance the decorative arts of Africa and the rest of the world.  They offer insight into the economic, geographic, and cultural patterns of past and present African societies.  An exotic world traveler of countless names and faces is the bead.

Bibliography:

Drewal, Henry John & Mason, John. Beads Body and Soul. UCLA Fowler Museum of Cultural         History. Los Angeles.1998.

Dubin, Lois Sherr. The History of Beads.  Harry N. Abrams, Inc. New York. 1987.

Gordon, Albert F. & Kahan, Leonard. The Tribal Bead: A Handbook of African Trade Beads.  Tribal         Arts Gallery, Inc. New York NY. 1976.

Schoeman, Stan. Brief History of Traditional African BeadCraft.  Marques Systems.                      http://minotaur.marques.co.za/clients/zulu/history. 1996.