Beadwork; The History and the Craft

Waldrop, L. (2012) Photo from home .

       Beadwork has been around for thousands of years and was used for decoration on Native American clothes and tools. The beads were often crafted from wood or bone and holes were formed in them using a drill like tool, Turquoise and other stones also were used in the making of jewelry (2012, Bead). Headdresses, decorative clothes and sometimes tools had a range of beads sewn onto them sometimes just for pure decoration and other times to tell a story. Symbols sewn with the beads sometimes had meaning and could tell you who someone was or what was going on in the tribe at the time of the make (2012, Bead).

        The craft is not simple nor is it hard, performed in most tribes by woman, the craft is mostly teediest and time consuming. I buy glass seed beads that from Wal-Mart and Michael’s and it can take days to even make a simple bracelet. The woman of the villages had to make the beads along with crafting the beads themselves so I can only imagine how long it took them to make the beautiful works that they did.

        I do loom beading which is using a loom to make bracelets, belts, headdresses and decoration for hats, such as the one I did for the hat in the picture. There are other ways of beading like making necklaces and earrings but I don’t do those often and they’re pretty simple so I’ll explain how to do loom work.

        Basically I have made my own loom. What I did was take three boards and nailed them together as if I were making a box and left out a side and have it so that two sides are up and the third side is the base. Then I took nails and nailed them part of the way down along the top part of both standing boards. String is then ran along the top and around the nails creating a somewhat “top” for the box. After that you tie the string in place and then you’re ready to start beading. Tie the string that you’ll be putting the beads on, on the a far side of the string that’s on the loom and place it towards one of the boards so that you’ll have more room to work (I’m right handed so it’s easier to me to have the beginning start on the left side and work to the right). Once the string is tied put one bead less than you have strings running on the loom and pull the stringed beads over the strings of the loom making sure there’s a string between every bead then string the beads again by taking the string on the beads and running it through the beads again running it this time under them and making sure that the loom string is in between the beaded string. Keep going making more rows and adding different colors to make patterns and tie it off when you get to the end and there you have it, the work is complete.

Waldrop, L. (2012) Drawing

(2012) Beads. Indians.org. Retrieved on November 15, 2012 from Indian.org

Fauntleroy, G. (2007). Beadwork. Native Peoples Magazine, 20(1), 34. Retrieved December 12, 2012, from the MasterFile Premier database.