Documentation
Reproduction of Chinese Warring State Beads
What? A selection of Chinese Warring State glass beads.
Where? China
Why? The warring state beads are fascinating as they demonstrate the trade and influence of other civilisations with China. You can see similar beads such as the yellow and blue circular bead found throughout different time periods and cultures. (See picture on the left). The warring state beads differ from their European counterparts in their complexity and their chemical composition.
Details of the extant pieces
Please refer to the attached appendix which has an easy reference guide to each bead chosen and recreated. These beads were generally not all found at the same time or in the same places. I chose to string mine all together on a metal necklace as I needed to keep the entry small and secure as a friend is very kindly transporting it from Canberra to New Zealand. Most of these beads
are generally displayed as individual items in museums. There was no obvious material remaining to show what the beads were strung on, but organic material such as a leather cord would have been common. (Holgate)
I chose to recreate a number of beads that are on display in a variety of museums to ensure historical accuracy. I worked with each museum's high-resolution images to recreate the beads with their unique characteristics.
These beads are intricate and take forty-five minutes for the simplest, to over an hour and a half for the more complicated beads. The whole project took about 40 hours of work, over a couple of months. The reason for this is that the turquoise colour is very hard to not burn, and the white is also difficult to keep “clean” as it’s in the flame for so long. As such, I had to redo these many times. Added to this, is the fact that the bigger the bead, and the more additional steps and glass, the more likely the bead may crack or shatter. (Which is heart breaking when you spend an hour on one!) I also read through stacks of articles and books and had to learn some Chinese to navigate some of these searches. Glass in this context is called liuli. (Kwan)
The hole of each bead is considerable for most of these beads. As such I used the “3-5mm” sized mandrel which tracks accurately with the sizing and shape of the beads, and the dimension notes mentioned by the museums.
Additionally, there are many centuries of wear on the beads that are on display. This means that colours and details are faded, and many of the beads have faults such as chips etc. The use of a different glass composition is noticed in the wear on the beads from China- the colour is much more faded, and the surface is quite degraded.
I have been working on developing my skill at melting glass and shaping it over the last year. I have learnt a lot, including where in the flame certain glass must be placed so that it doesn’t ruin the colour or texture. I have learnt how to steadily place my hands and rotate both glass and mandrel so that an even amount of glass, at the right temperature, is kept at the right heat to reproduce the desired bead.
The warring state beads presented a variety of challenges. Glass is a dangerous, sometimes fickle substance, and certain colours only work properly at a certain heat. Some of the trickier techniques (and melting glass onto a mandrel and keeping it even is tricky to start with!) that I used for this project include:
- Studying each (photo of) bead in a variety of lights to get an accurate grasp of the details and finishes required.
- Working with tricky colours such as yellow, turquoise, and light blue which can be easy to “burn” or mutate colour.
- Combining colours and the perfect melt down spot to get a more accurate shade and shape.
- Creating the beads with “eye” decoration in the right size and number. The more complicated beads can have over 170 individual steps in the creation of circles and melting in of shapes.
- Also ensuring that I copied the “flawed” beads as well, to accurately represent the extant pieces. As a perfectionist- trust me when I say this was possibly my hardest challenge!
- Shaping similar size beads but also recreating subtle differences such as size and shape.
- Creating stringers for finer detail in the small dots. One needs to carefully pull glass at a specific pace to achieve this.
- Certain shapes, such as the double eyes, require precise manoeuvring and shaping- the use of a knife needed to recreate the shape.
- Using techniques such as flattening the dots between each layer, melting them in completely before adding in the new layer, and then applying the final tiny circle.
I did not use the lead barium glass as it’s not commonly used, and the toxicity is not something I wish to be exposed to. I use Effetre Glass which has a working temperature of 945 °C. Effetre is a variety of soda-lime glass.
The earliest-known method of glass manufacturing in China, the alkali (generally potash) and lime glass system, soon gave way to the lead-barium system of glass production that characterised the Warring States period. While archaeologists are not entirely sure why the Chinese first chose to work with this formula, it is believed that the wide availability of both lead and barium and the fact that this composition lowered the melting point of the glass played a role. (As discussed in Early Manufacturing Techniques, the furnaces used in ancient times often struggled to produce enough heat to melt glass.) Produced in the Yangtze River valley region, lead-barium glass soon became very popular within China and was circulated throughout the more accessible areas of that vast country.
Making the glass beads
- I used a graphite paddle, mandrels, bead release, a knife, fire annealing and gravity. I try to use the least tools possible and authentic equipment that would have been used by the glassmakers of the time. Apart from my fire set-up, all the equipment I have used would have been used at the time as well.
- Clear broken glass was often used as well as imported blocks of coloured glass
- The glass rods I used to recreate these beads were Effetre Murano – 104 COE soft glass rods. This is a close replica of the glass that would have been used at the time.
- Bead artisans would have created a small kiln or furnace. The broken recycled glass would be put into the furnace through holes in the side to melt in a dish inside the furnace. Air was pumped into the furnace to keep the charcoal hot.
- I use a hot head torch and MAPP gas. In the future I have plans to recreate a small portable kiln but melting glass in a small kiln is very difficult as getting the heat hot enough to melt the glass is a struggle.
- Metal rods (mandrels) were dipped with a clay mixture called bead release. The molten glass is wound onto the rod until the desired shape was achieved. Once the bead size and shape were achieved, a design could be added by heating thin bits of glass and wrapping them around the bead, with a “stringer” that was heated and laid on top.
- I use mandrels that would have been very similar to those used, however, mine are shorter as they don’t need to be as long to reach into a hot fire. The bead release I use has the crucial ingredients of water, kaolin and alumina hydrate, which is a composition that would have been used.
- Beads would then be moved to an annealing dish in the furnace. This would prevent thermal shock, lowering the chances of the bead cracking.
- Instead of annealing them in a furnace, I use a product called vermiculite to allow the beads to cool down slowly. I also use a kiln. In the future, I would like to try annealing them in a furnace to see what it is like.
- After the beads are finished, I remove them from the mandrels, clean them out with some bead cleaning tools and give them a quick clean with some soapy water.
- I included a selection of creative beads using the resources that would have been available to make this necklace. As you can see, the original colour layout is more striking in colour.
Future Projects:
For this project, I would match the sizes even more accurately as well as the colour and opacity.
I am enjoying creating pieces from different times and cultures and I will continue to develop my skills by choosing challenging projects.
I also enjoyed working with the museum and the professor in a previous project, and I would like to continue working with people like this. Not only was it very educational and rewarding, but it resulted in me contributing to the historical accuracy of the museum- which I thought was cool!
Resources:
Primary Resources:
High-Resolution Copy of the extant beads. Images and links to their original museum location can be found in the appendix.
Secondary Resources:
- Guido, Margaret. The Glass Beads of Anglo-Saxon England: c. AD 400-700, Boydell Press, 1999. Holgate, Barbara. “The Pagan Lady of Peel”, St. Patrick’s Isle Archaeological Trust, 1987.
- Liu, R. K. Ancient Chinese glass beads. The Bead Journal 2 (2): 9-19. —1985 Asian Glass Ornaments. 1975 Liu, R.K. Chinese Glass Beads. Export and Minority. Ornament. 2013
- Kim, Christopher. Early Chinese Lead-Barium Glass; Its Production and Use from the Warring States to Han Periods (475 BCE-220 CE), PDF file. (2012)
- Kwan, Simon. Early Chinese Faience and Glass Beads and Pendants. 2013, BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers
- Regia Anglorum: https://regia.org/
Image credits
- Figure 1: Map of the Han Dynast- Bladams 2
- Figure 2: Yellow and blue beads which have been found everywhere!-CMerritt 2
- Figure 3: Collection of Chinese Warring State beads-CMerritt 2
- Figure 4: Collection of Chinese Warring State beads with my hand for scale-CMerritt 2
- Figure 5: Large dots, with an exact colour recreation, and a plausible ( light green) colour recreation-CMerritt
- Figure 6: Collection of the beads in a different light- CMerritt 4
- Figure 7: Examples of using the same colours and tools in a creative but plausible manner- CMerritt 4 Figure 8: A close up of images- CMerritt 6
Websites
- http://bladams.tripod.com/empire/han_e/maps.html.
- https://www.bohaglass.co.uk/glass-art-early-glass-manufacturing-techniques/
