Fifty Shades of Purple

Purple  is my favourite color, but fifty shades ?  I don't think so. I have actually only a few shades, and mostly amethyst. Some shades mentioned in Wikipedia include the following:

amethyst, eggplant, fuchsia, indigo, lavender, magenta, mauve, orchid, plum, periwinkle, violet, mulberry, wisteria  

 

Being a purple person I have always wanted purple beads to go with my outfits but purple beads that are old and preferably ancient are scarce. So I was mighty pleased to come up with the three bracelets below strung in purply shades.

 



Purply shades

 

The top most bracelet features a large biconical faceted amethyst (maybe fluorite) bead as centerpiece, strung with small faceted biconical crystal beads. The crystal beads are ancient from Indonesia while the amethyst or fluorite is from China of unknown vintage and hopefully its also ancient or at least old.

Real cool beads!



 Bracelet no 2 shown below has another large amethyst (not sure whether its fluorite)bead as centre piece(I bought 3 of these beads at one go, so I still have one more to think up a design) this time strung with dark purple semi round pearls.

 



Dark and light shades of purple



The purple pearls are also from China and I have a feeling they are new and dyed  but they add another shade of purple  and contrast fabulously with the light amethyst bead.

The last  bracelet  uses 3 small amethyst or fluorite beads as accents to enhance the crystal, agate and moonstone beads. The old crystals are from Vietnam and all the rest  from Kashmir.



Amethyst accents light up the ancient crystals



In my purple mood I dug into my bead chest and managed to turn up a few ancient beads in varying shades of purple



Ancient lotus beads from Myanmar, likely Pyu dynasty



 

Amethyst lotus bud from Cambodia more likely vintage than ancient



And my most prized, purply  eyebead  from Warring States period (475-221BC). There are altogether 15 purple dots on this dotty bead!

Dotty eyebead from Warring States

Yet another  eyebead in dark and light shades of lavender.

Ancient glass eyebead

 

The last piece of purply stuff that I show has been handmade by me to celebrate this purple shades post. Its a  kumihimo braided bracelet. It uses an antique jade button (alas not purple jade but green jade) as the clasp and sits well on the wrist.
 

Kumihimo Braided Bracelet