Travel gives buying beads or beaded jewelry a whole other level of significance than purchasing a few supplies from your local bead store. Lately, I’ve been reminiscing about one of my earliest encounters with beads abroad…
In college, I signed up for a study-abroad program that would take me to Russia. During the many hours of preparation, the professor leading the trip told my group that amber jewelry was a “big deal” in Russia. So, of course, once we landed in Russia, everyone was searching for amber jewelry for themselves or their significant others.
I watched many of my peers find the “perfect” amber ring or necklace, but nothing I saw spoke to me. After a whole month abroad, it was time to head home and I despaired of not having any amber adornments. Then, on our last day, I was walking through a flea market when I saw it – a simple tiger tail necklace featuring a few amber chips, including one naturally formed drop at the center, evenly spaced by flattened crimp beads. It was hanging from a nail hammered into the side of a wooden kiosk. The necklace was dainty, carefully handcrafted, and cheap – approximately $2 USD. I bought the necklace thinking that at least I could say I had Russian amber, and if I never wore it, well it’s not like I had broken the bank with it.
As it turns out, I wore that necklace nearly every day for three years straight. Then, when I came to BeadStyle and Bead&Button, I realized that the necklace was nothing to brag about as far as materials or skill were concerned. I stopped wearing it.
This past weekend, I thought about what a shame it was that I wasn’t wearing a necklace that held such significance to me and that I had scoured all of western Russia to find. So I restrung the amber beads on flexible beading wire, preserving the space between them with matching seed beads. The necklace is still simple and dainty, the very qualities that attracted me to it in the first place, but now it is even more colorful and a little more sophisticated than before. I am once again proud to wear my Russian amber, the perfect combination of beauty and modesty.