BEADWORK

Beadwork is an art or craft of attaching beads to one and another by stringing them with a sewing needle or beading needle and thread or thin wire, or sewing them on cloth.

Past

Bead making and beadwork stretch back at least 40,000 years ago. Many beads have reflected religious significance for the culture. There are few type of bead during that time, and some of the bead has been made from glass, bone and clay.

Beside, the earliest beaded materials were likely natural item like shells and seeds. They are different way to do beadwork during that time. For example, using faience beads. It is created by Mesopotamian and it shaped like cylinder or flat discs.

Present

Beads has become popular nowadays. It is popular for jewelry, clothing, handbag, shoe, and even lamp shade. Many artisans like to work with beads to create bead jewelry. Not only that beads continue to be fashioned from natural materials like precious ans semi precious mineral, glass, paper and even plastic.

Beside than that, some of the artisans even create a portraits using beads. So bead has become popular and popular nowadays.

Type of beadwork

There are 4 type of beadwork which is bead stringing, off-loom bead weaving, loom beading and bead embriodery. This four type of beadwork can created different product and different pattern. Actually I had explained each type of beadwork in my previous blog. If you are interested with it, you can check out this link: https://isabellong.wixsite.com/myblog/post/interesting-study-visits

After I done my survey and research, I realized there are a lot of people feel interested in making jewelry by using bead. There are few artisans who make this type of jewelry and the jewelry that they make is beautiful and unique. Many people would like to spend money and spend time on learning this type of craft.

Here are the artisans :

Elizaveta Sorensen - is a Russian craftswoman who now lives in Denmark. She like joint beads and gemstones to make gorgeous jewelry. She is making earring, necklaces and bracelets. She even provide an online class which allow people from all around the world to learn. Not only that I saw one of her website with a lot of comment, and all the comment is about praising her artwork and her teaching. A lot of people take part in the online class and workshop. This mean that beadwork has become more and more popular right now. Her artwork is love by many people and people will spend money to buy her jewelry.

Here are some of her artwork:

There are some craft who make by others artisan :

All this beading craft are really nice and useful and I think some of it is quite suitable in Malaysia. For example, the pin for tudung. All artisans be able to create all this craft is really awesome and many people would like to learn all this. Beadwork has no longer just be a hobby but an occupation. People began to learn it and start to do their business by selling and teaching. Actually this is not an easy work. You need to have a lot of patient and skill to do it.

People might think that using bead to create jewelry or use it with other product might look old and look not fashionable. But in my opinion, I disagree. How to look fashion and how to look young is depend on how you create it. You can be more creative just like the artisans artwork above. It is young, stylish and useful. All the craft that you make is unique. Bead is so simple and common but you can make it become more valuable and more attractive by joining them one by one and create a good product.

I think beadwork will not be eliminated in the future. There are a lot of things are make by bead and a lot of things need to work with beads nowadays. For example, fashion designer need this type of craft apply it on their design. Bead can add texture, dimension and design to an existing cloth. This is what we usually see in our daily life. Also, there are many people like to use bead to create their portrait and drawing. Bead is not easily replace by others materials because bead has variety shape, colour, size and type. You can easily choose what ever you one. But maybe others materials do not have that much. Even a cup cover also can make by bead. Lastly, bean can be use in a variety area so it won't be eliminated in the future. 🎉✨