The most unusual revelation happened on this trip; I have vintage beads and I need to stop, re-assess them before designing with them and possibly change the way I am keeping them in their less than protective container.

How this revelation happened, was like all good revelations, unexpected and out of the blue.

In a small artist gallery in Mendocino, one of the shop keepers complimented me on my Jelly Buddha necklace that I was wearing. To me, this piece is 10 years old, and not very expensive - given when I made it and the materials. It is one of my favorite day-to-day pieces, goes with just about anything I own.

We struck up a conversation after I mentioned I made the piece, and design jewelry. She asked me how much one would cost to have one made for her, and I quoted about 35-50 dollars. This figured is based on what I, in my head, still see the piece costing given what I paid for the jelly buddhas years ago. The buddhas are a rainbow set of colors and I made the piece in the order of the chakras.

It never dawned on me, that well, the jelly buddhas at that time were from a 15 year old stash that someone sold me - thinking then they were worthless beads, after all she paid 50 cents for the strand when she bought them.

This makes my jellies 25+ years old, and this is where the problem starts.

My Google foo is pretty good. I have been known to find very obscure and hard to find items through Google search. However finding another strand of jelly buddhas was proving to be more difficult than anticipated.

I finally gave up and went to Etsy to see if anyone had the elusive buddhas, and that is when the revelation happened.

Two different vintage artists had pairs (red and a yellow set) of the jelly buddhas and this is when I learned that these are German vintage glass - and $3.50 - $5.00 a buddha. My seventeen colorful buddha necklace all of a sudden wasn't just a casual piece and isn't a 35 dollar necklace anymore.

Now, knowing the name of the pressed glass I went back to goggle. As I have been hunting, I found that I have a lot more vintage german pressed glass, some of the beads I thought were extremely tacky are actually worth a lot of money. Once I get back home, the 7 boxes of cheap pressed glass (as I have referred to it) gets to have a re-visiting and definitely no longer treated as second class citizens.

Lesson learned; make sure to date your speciality beads. Anything pressed, odd, different or international needs to be dated and cataloged

Tags: beading, jewelry, pressed glass, vintage
Current Location: Mendocino