Wood, Nut, Bone, Simulated Bone and Ivory, Amber Beads — Beads by Nature but Not Stone!

To round out the ethnic look, or invent a new look entirely. Here's some fun choices in non-stone beads. All are lightweight - an advantage when making sizeable jewelry!

Wood: Wood - lightweight, good for guy jewelry, or using them as a base for beading over with netting techniques.

Tagua Nut — “Vegetable Ivory”: Carved or sliced from the seed of the Tagua, or Ivory Palm. (Phytelephas aequatorialis) (Gobs more info and pictures here - will open in new window.) The nut from this tree, while pulpy and edible when new, hardens with time into a creamy white seed, about the size of an egg. These seeds can be carved, dyed, painted, used to simulate ivory, or go beyond that to be medium of their own! This is what we know as the Tagua nut, or vegetable ivory!

Bone Beads: Hand selected, as most of the bone beads we see are rather crudely made, or are indistinguishable from plastic! We prefer to pass on those. Mostly made in India or China, and are probably cow bone.

Amber: Amber - fossilized tree resin. The soft and meltable nature of Amber lends itself to reprocessing, such that they are huge facilities in Russia, melting down low-grade Amber and refining it and re-manufacturing it into stunning beads of breath-taking quality. We try to distinguish "Natural" Amber - unprocessed except for the shaping and polishing process - and other Ambers that have been heavily processed (where we know).

Resin — Simulated Wood, Ivory: Those of you who know us, know that we have avoided "plastic" beads for a long time - preferring to stock better quality beads for making better quality and heirloom jewelry. However, some extremely nice beads are now available that are really quite lovely - and are made of resins, polymers or other man-made items. In particular - we thought these beads were nice, and they do have the added benefit of being lightweigh, despite their significant size.

We try to choose consistent stock, but the nature of natural beads is that there will be inconsistency between strands and between individual beads.