Here's another ancient swinger! The eyebead, swinging in the Huan. Briefly, a Huan according to the Chinese definition is a ring wit...

One day while looking through a Chinese jade book * I was excited to come across an artefact from the Warring States period (481-221 BCE.) ...

I bought this "yu" carving of yuan yang ducks from my Guiyang trip. The name yuan yang, which refers to mandarin ducks, is a sy...

This is the last in the face bead/pendant series. This face is not scary, in fact it looks quite pleasant, nice eyes and mouth. But is it ma...

Continuing the scary bead series, here is a second face bead. This second bead was purchased in Myanmar. I think it is made of glass. The...

I bought this small sized white jade face bead/pendant from China. It is only 2cm x 1.3cm. The beancurd white color of the bead resembles L...

I bought a beautiful white peacock carving while touring Guiyang the capital of Guizhou Province. Guizhou has been condemened by many visito...

I purchased these biconical faceted jade beads from a smiling peasant in NW China. While he was not exactly "the Leech-gatherer on t...

Bats may conjure up visions of spooky vampires but to the Chinese it is a symbol for blessings. The Chinese character for bats Fu is a homon...

I purchased this strand of freshwater pearls from South China many years ago when freshwater pearls were all the rage. Nowadays they look r...

Well, these jade fishes are more likely to have come fom some boulder in some mountain than from the sea. I got this catch from a market, a ...

Still on the theme of BIS, although strictly speaking the jade objects that I show on this post cannot be called Bis. However as their form...

The BI is a form of jade artifact from ancient China. It is a flat jade disc with a circular hole in the centre I bought these 2 bi sha...

What better way to ring in the Year of the Rat than with this gorgeously elaborate nephrite hairpin or is it a floral spray ? I can...

I spent a few happy hours on New Year's Day, 2008 looking through my bead box to come up with this necklace of agates, shell, and old g...

Beancurd is one of my comfort foods. The texture and color of the central bead on this bracelet is so soft and silken it resembles a piece ...

When I chanced upon these jade flowers in a shop on my last visit to China I was almost asphyxiated with Lust (but not of the Lee Ang kind)...

This blue glass pendant hails from Yuan period of China (1115-1368 AD)and was purchased together with items in the 2 earlier posts. Acc...

This tiny pair of earrings brings together my twin loves of jade and beads. I created this design by embedding red vintage glass beads into...

Here's yet another blue beauty. Composed from the same hoard of beads and florets as that in earlier posts. The central disk pendant (...

This piece may have been part of a pair or it may have been a standalone. Bird motifs are popular among jade carvers and this one has been ...

Another charmer (pun intended) is this ancient blue glass necklace which hails from the Song/Yuan period of China. For want of a better ter...

This pair of miniature flower pots are actually extra large jatim beads (6cmx6.5cm). Jatim beads are ancient glass beads from Indonesia. U...

A thing of beauty is a joy forever Its loveliness increases It will never pass into nothingness but still will keep, a bower quiet fo...

Talking about "exquisiteness" in previous post, here is one exquisite white jade flower. Carved in multi layers with the petals o...

The white nephrite jade flowers  I show today are among my favourites and hail from Shanxi Province China. Because of their rather large ...

Chilly, raspberry and ice these are some of my favourite things! No, I'm not talking about ingredients for a recipe but about the co...

According to bead terminology a button is also a bead, hence this set of buttons is included in this bead blog. Their vintage is about 70-...