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Until a little over a decade ago, there were many shops of various sizes in Bali, Indonesia, specializing in Javanese trade beads. These shops offered a rich selection of traditional Javanese glass beads to tourists and buyers from all over the world.However, their numbers gradually declined, and in recent years, most have disappeared, leaving only a few specialized stores that systematically handle Javanese beads.Each of the shops that closed had an enormous amount of glass bead inventory at the time of closure. While tracing where these items went, we were able to acquire old stock that has been preserved to this day.Today, newly made Javanese glass beads are typically strung on durable cotton cords. However, in the past, they were often strung on inexpensive, thin vinyl threads. Due to prolonged exposure to sunlight, the vinyl deteriorated, causing the strands to become extremely fragile—so much so that they could easily fall apart with just a slight touch.As a result, many of the Javanese beads we have recently obtained had already come apart and have been restrung using cotton cords. Because of this, there are many strands that contain a mix of different bead designs. In such cases, we either disassemble the strands and restring them using beads of the same design, or sell them as mixed strands, each assigned a single product number.
Published page Lampwork glass beads from Java and the other countries
