ever find out whether we may really equate the “smalti” and “vetri” in the Italian, the
French “email” and “verre”, the English “paste” and “glass” with the German
“Composition” (“Paste”) and “Glas”?
Can we only classify the rods, tubes and canes according to their size? How does our
path take us from “Kulanz” to “Coulance” and to “Atlas” bead, which consists of that
type of glass made with trapped air bubbles, but is not the same as the Atlas glass of
the hollow-glass industry? In regard to the transparency of the material, there are
again a number of categories that, among other things, also depend on the state of
preservation of the bead in question: transparent, translucid, opaque. In between there
are many gradations which are determined by all sorts of factors, such as the
thickness of the glass, to name only one.
In addition to the basic shape of the bead, according to its longitudinal profile (round,
oval, rectangular, triangulär, polygonal, concave or convex, curved, etc.) there is the
far greater number of fagon beads that cannot be subjected to any kind of
Classification; longish tubes are also defined in very different ways: sometimes pieces
of glass with a long bellied shape are called “Spindeln” (“spindles”) (tableau, F. Unger,
Liebenau, Technical Museum Vienna, TH 34341), at other times “cylindrical beads” or
“tubes” (Breit, n.d.). linder the label of “cubes” we sometimes find the beads that are
broken off from four-cornered glass tubes, blown or “full” (solid) cubes (= cubes
molded in press-molding houses) (Posselt 1907, p. 1). An excellent view of the almost
timeless variety of bead shapes is provided by a selection of strung beads that were
used as raw materials for further Processing (ills. 30-41, pp. 69-80).
On the sample cards compiled by Emil Hübner & Sohn GmbH in Neugablonz the
shapes are labeled with the following names: "Kugel” {spheres) and “Kegel” (cones),
spools, round beads, triangles, pyramids and double pyramids, “Kreuzquader,”cone,
rosette, hub, paving stone, spinning top, honey-comb, drop, olives (bevelled,
hexagonal, screw, bayonett, baroque, drill, Florentine olives), pear-drops (screw, flat,
bevelled and transverse pear-drops), cylinders (round cylinders, bone cylinders, fluted
cylinders, S-cylinders), clover-leaf, rose-bead, leaf, lentils, grapes, melons, berries,
apples and pears (lengthwise pears, baroque pears), single hole, big hole, giant hole
and wide hole beads, buttons (oval and faceted), pipes, bows, thimble, arrowheads,
bones, molars, blister bead, wing, bell, cogwheel. This list is by no means complete,
but it does show the possibilities for giving names to shapes. With very few exceptions
reserved for generally accepted terminology, the choices made by individual
Companies were certainly different.
Judging the shape from its name can sometimes be compared with the difficulties in
determining the techniques from the surface of a bead: was the faceted surface cut or
press-molded and then cut or was it already press-molded with a polish (by polished
molds)? It is also not always easy to teil interior from exterior ribbed beads.
Added to the problem of naming colors, is the question of what technique was used in
achieving them. Were they colored in the batch, with overlays, color linings, superficial
etchings, was the color painted on?
For a long time the opposites, “hollow - solid,” were the underlying criteria for
classifying beads. We find this in many Contemporary sources of the 19th Century
(encyclopaedia, specialized literature on glass technology): Keess draws the
difference between “2main categories ... solid or melted, and ... hollow or blown”
(Keess 2/1823, p. 899). Leng is satisfied with a list of the “small glass products:” glass-
beads, glass corals, glass garnets, glass buttons, glass flitter, knitting and embroidery
beads and seed beads (Leng 1835, p. 500). Altmütter, like Keess, lists hollow and
solid beads (Altmütter 1841, p. 87).
J. Loth draws a difference between beads that were made from glass canes and those
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