What is a Chevron Bead?
A chevron is a bead type produced from a glass "cane" known as a Rosetta. Cane refers to rods of glass with color; these rods can be simple, containing a single color, or they can be complex and contain many strands of multiple colors in pattern, as are those used in producing the chevron beads.
Chevrons were drawn from a hollow cane typically with six thin layers of glass, traditionally white, blue, white, brick red, white then finally blue. This was then ground to produce patterns with five concentric stars with twelve points. The canes were chopped allowing large numbers of beads to be produced from each production run.
They were first produced in Venice, on the island of Murano at the end of the 14th century with the first reference to chevrons appearing in the inventory of the Barovier glass works in 1496. They were one of the core bead types used as Trade Beads destined for West Africa and the Americas. Like most Murano glass making techniques of the time, production processes were heavily protected.
Trade Bead Migration into North America
The first record of European glass beads coming into the Americas is in Columbus’ own log where he describes how e presented the natives with “red caps and some strings of (green) glass beads”, (Orchard, 1975) and “in this simple manner was begun the acculturation process that led ultimately to the disintegration of aboriginal American culture” (Quimby, 1966). The holds of the ships of those who followed contained a variety of trade goods: trinkets, iron knives, guns, kettles, hatchets, broadcloth and beads, beads, beads.
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Tracking a Conquistador with Beads: Desoto’s calling cards?
Five years after Fernbank Museum launched an archaeological expedition to investigate the history of early contact between Native American Indians and Europeans in Georgia, their exhibit, De Soto’s Footsteps, On view May 22, 2010 – March 31, 2012 showcases some of the rare artifacts that tell of those encounters and will reveal the significance of the findings..
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Seed Bead History and Use by Native American Tribes
The purpose of this article is to provide a thumbnail sketch of the history of one of the most popular trade items used in Native American craftwork. The use of the “seed bead” by Native Americans beginning in the 1800s was the result of hundreds of years of European glass technology intersecting with the westward expansion of the United States across the continent.
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