Visionary poet William Blake saw the world in a grain of sand, but a new exhibit at the Bead Museum offers the world in a tiny bead. "The Eternal Bead," that is. The exhibit, which opened Jan. 2 and will run at least through June, shows how beads have been used across cultures and over time to identify, protect, celebrate, count and adorn.
"The bead expresses some of our oldest thoughts and concerns," says curator Hilary Whittaker. It follows the human life span, from Ghana's multicolored birth beads to an intricate Berber coral-and-amber wedding necklace to the shimmering bangles of married Indian women to Egyptian burial beads (500 B.C.). A Turkish eye bead wards off the "evil eye," a decorated Ashanti doll ensures fertility. Beads, used in all major faiths, form crystal Roman Catholic rosaries, Buddhist rosewood-and-ivory malas and the rain forest animal totems of the Tairona culture of present-day Colombia. Heavy silver earrings connote a Tibetan man's wealth. An elaborate fly whisk marks the ruling status of an African Kuba chief.
This 18th-century Russian icon painting of the Virgin Mary and the Crucifixion is embellished with seed pearls and beads.
(Robert Pringle -- Bead Museum)
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The exhibit may well inspire your next creation. You might try weaving thimbles and seed pearls into an elaborate Filipino choker or construct wearable art influenced by a Mexican jaguar mask.
The exhibit ties into a four-part documentary, "World on a String," being produced by Diana Friedberg in Los Angeles. The Bead Society of Greater Washington will host the East Coast premiere of Part 1, "The Eternal Bead," in June (check www.bsgw.org for additional details as the date approaches. Part 1 is also available at worldonastringmovie.com for $24.99). The release of each segment will coincide with the opening of a related new exhibit at the museum, with the "The Tiny, Mighty Bead," focusing on the seed bead, slotted for late June.
-- Mary Quattlebaum
