GLASS CORALS - GLASS GARNETS - GARNET BEADS - PATERNOSTER 
BEADS 
Some names for glass beads confront us again and again, albeit in a confusion of 
different meanings. Glass corals and glass garnets belong to these terms. 
Generally speaking, one understood a glass coral to be a round bead and glass 
garnets to be faceted beads. Then again, the terms were sometimes narrowed. 
On the other hand it is quite possible to run into a glass coral as a faceted bead (hollow 
or solid), and again as a round bead or a paternoster bead intended for a rosary! And 
the coral does not always have to have a coral red color as its most important 
characteristic; sometimes it is the shape or the finishing (the cut), etc. 
Let us look at several Contemporary opinions from the 19th Century in chronological 
Order: 
“Sometimes the little beads look as though they were cut with sharp edges, like garnets, ...”(Loy- 
sel 1818, p. 305). “In the red beads, which are supposed to imitate corals ... varnish-like colors 
... are blown into them." (Keess 2/1823, p. 902). “The glass garnets are made from a molten 
glass that looks as much as possible like real garnets and acquire their shape through cutting.” 
(Leng 1835, p. 503). “Glass corals can be had very easily. The worker sitting in front of the melt- 
ing pot spears a gather of liquid glass onto a sharp pointed piece of iron wire, which simulta- 
neously provides the coral with a hole, and through rapid turning gives it its round shape and then 
lets it fall into a cooling pot that Stands at some distance from the fire.”(Leng 1835, p. 503). 
According to Altmütter, solid beads were “formerly offen calledglass cora/s”(Altmütter 
1841, p. 99). 
“Occasionally one can observe that not only solid, but also hollow beads blown from thicker 
glass, cut and faceted, are made to imitate genuine cut corals when they are blown from crystal 
glass, and finally coated on the inside with red-colored wax” (Altmütter 1841, p. 106). 
“Glass corals are made of blown beads, which one coats on the inside with colored wax" (Loth 
1859, p. 73). 
“Glass corals are glass beads which are made from glass that gets the desired red color of corals 
through the addition oftin oxide, copper sulfide and iron ox/'cfe” (Karmarsch-Heeren 1880, p. 44). 
Even language researchers, etymologists, have a great deal to öfter us: Pierer says 
that “corals” means the same as “little glass beads” (Pierer 11/1851, p. 853), and in 
addition to attributing the paternoster with the names “Our Father”and “rosary bead,” 
he also applies a third meaning, necklaces of large and small beads or spheres or 
coins made into pendants or long tube beads (Pierer 8/1851, p. 711). 
In the language dictionary compiled by the Grimm Brothers, there is a flood of 
variations on the word “coral,”stemming from various languages and periods, such as 
“coralle, corallus, koral, korall, koralle, coral;”then “kralle, chroll, kralen, kraal, koraal, 
grall, krall, korelle, köret, corelln, krellen, karellen, krelle, korällelein, krallei” (Grimm 
5/1873, p. 1795). 
In a later Grimm volume we find under “paternoster 1) our father/2) the larger bead 
(representing the Lord’s prayer) in a rosary and also the latter itself / 3) a) in 
architecture, the bead staff, the bead frieze” (Grimm 7/1889, pp. 1502, 1503). 
Consequently, “paternoster” confronts us as a bead in a rosary and the bead confronts 
us again in the bead staff. It only remains to add that the French “patenötrier,” the 
German “Paterlmacher,” is sometimes used to mean the lamp blower and the bead 
winder. 
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