The Bead Goes On

· Shows the complete sample collection of the most important bead exporter to West Africa in the heydays of colonial bead trade · Beautifully illustrated with a selection of the sample cards · Long awaited publication as the beads were never on display to the public, thus providing a unique source of information for bead collectors and bead suppliers. The Bead Goes On contains the complete sample card collection with trade beads from the J.F. Sick & Co. This German (later Dutch)...
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· Shows the complete sample collection of the most important bead exporter to West Africa in the heydays of colonial bead trade · Beautifully illustrated with a selection of the sample cards · Long awaited publication as the beads were never on display to the public, thus providing a unique source of information for bead collectors and bead suppliers. The Bead Goes On contains the complete sample card collection with trade beads from the J.F. Sick & Co. This German (later Dutch) company was one of the most important-if not the most important exporter-of beads to West Africa in the first half of the twentieth century. The important centers for bead making were Venice, Bohemia and Holland. Beads were relatively cheap and a much coveted commodity in the newly colonized countries of the times. In West Africa they were used in exchange for gold, palm oil and many other products and also played a role in the slave trade. The heyday of the colonial trade in beads was around and between 1850-1940. When in 1964 the firm closed its office in Venice, it donated the sample collection of some 22,000 Venetian glass beads kept in its head office in Amsterdam to the Tropenmuseum in Amsterdam. This is a unique and very important reference collection of lamp beads and rosetta beads. The Bead Goes On shows a selection of the cards and the accompanying DVD shows the complete collection, in high and low resolution.