Early Roman Mosaic Face Beads 42.4
FIGS. 1-3, 8. EARLY ROMAN MOSAIC FACE BEADS, WITH THE TWO MAIN TYPES OF IMAGES, GORGON AND MEDUSA, AND BEADS WITH COURTESAN IMAGES. Both of the largest images show beads that have been reground, 1.25 centimeter diameters, ex-RKL Collection. Small inset photograph of the Little Courtesan shows the characteristic red ribbon in her hair and the fine strands of hair on her forehead, as well as hair down the sides of her face; from Iran. After Fukai 1983. Adjacent is larger image of another Little Courtesan bead, with similar features, find spot unknown. After Yoshimizu 1989. Photographs and scans by Robert K. Liu/Ornament, unless noted.
Below: Figure 4. Tabular Medusa bead, of a square bust slice embedded in beige glass surround, 1.5 cm diameter, much like adjacent large Freer slice 4A. Note differences in necklaces. Courtesy of Ex-LSD collection, Jamey Allen photograph.
Figure 4A. Unique, large square Medusa plaque/face cane, with distinct nostrils and two necklaces, thick, wavy hair, 1.6 cm high, same scale as 4B; edges of cane ground, Freer F1909.511; Courtesy of the Freer Gallery, Liu 2017. This and 4B may be only examples of face cane slices before cane pulled to smaller diameters for use in beads.
Figure 4B. Unique, large round Gorgon plaque/face cane, no medial line on nose, 2.2 cm diameter, Freer F1909.491; Courtesy of the Freer Gallery, Liu 2017.
Figure 5. Tabular round Gorgon beads, left fake from Burma, right real, from Crimea, RKL1295R14F26a.
While I have long been fascinated with Roman mosaic face beads, only recently have I discovered that there is a third major type of facial imagery, besides that of Gorgon, Medusa and their variants found in Nubian mosaic face beads and recent discoveries in Hungary and the Sudan (Korom 2018, Liu 2014, Then-Obłuska 2014, 2018, Then-Obłuska and Wagner 2019). The images on Early Roman Face Beads have until now been assumed to be representations of the three Gorgon sisters; either Stheno or Euryale appear as Gorgons, hideous humans with writhing snake hair, while Medusa, the only mortal, is depicted as a beautiful woman with long hair and a bust with a necklace around her neck, although Selling (1942) identified her as Aphrodite (Figs. 1-2; Karlin 2007, Karoglou 2018, Zolotnikova 2016). Both types of images have apotropaic value (Milovanovi and Andelkovic Grašar 2017). Ironically, all the Gorgon bead images, with the exception of one from Nubia, are rather benign in appearance (Then-Obłuska et. al., 2019: Fig. 1, no. 5).
Now, we have the addition of the very rare courtesan face beads, examined in this article and scanned some two decades ago in my database of Roman mosaic face beads, although earlier researchers depicted but did not identify them as a distinct type (Selling 1942), nor did I. The courtesan face bead depicts a woman with a ribbon in her hair, fine strands of hair or a fringe on her forehead and hair on both sides of her face, as seen in the images above (Fig. 3, 8). Other versions of the courtesan bead differ but all display a ribbon in their hair (Figs. 9-10).
The most comprehensive study to date of Roman mosaic face beads is still Selling, although its publication in Swedish mostly likely hampered wider availability, as well as the poor quality of 1940s printing. This important article had few photographs, mostly diagrammatic representations of the many Early and Late face beads, which greatly reduces their value in any close study of iconography and stylistics. Stout (1985, 1986) concentrated on Late Roman Face Beads, although Early ones were well-covered by her.
Many problems exist in studying the iconography of these beads, usually regarded as luxuries, the primary being the minute size of the face canes, and most of these two thousand or so years old glass ornaments are often in very poor condition when excavated, obscuring both their features and colors, although many are restored by grinding or polishing off corroded surfaces (Figs. 1-2). Highly magnified and high resolution photographs are necessary for iconographic analyses, but are often lacking. Without good clear images, it may not be possible to differentiate between poor crafting of the mosaic image and the distortion caused when the cane was pulled or when the cane slice was applied hot to the glass bead, or when hot-pierced (Fig. 14A, 26), as well identifying telltale characteristics of the images and their makers. Also, no loose canes exist except two unique large slices of Gorgon and Medusa (Figs. 4A-4B), possibly before they were pulled into the small sizes applied onto face beads (Liu 2008).
Because of their high value on the antiquities and collectors markets, Roman mosaic face beads are often faked, or incorrect reconstructions are made from fragments of real face beads (Figs. 5, 6). The only more recent facial canes with a slight resemblance to Roman face canes were made by Vincezo Moretti in the 19th century, but they were not applied onto beads (Sarpellon 1990). Contemporary face beads and canes made by glass artists are not meant to copy ancient ones and are easily recognized (Figs. 16-17).
My own interest began in 1974, when I knew so little about these iconic and rare luxury ornaments, and erroneously believed the face canes were composed of mirror image half faces fused together, like the larger theatre masks (Liu 1974, 2008). With the recent publication of the unique Nubian Face Beads (Liu et. al., 2017, Then-Obłuska 2019, Then-Obłuska et al. 2019) and the excavation of more Early Face Beads from Nubia, Egypt and Hungary (Bajnóczi et al. 2018, Korom 2018, Then-Obłuska 2015, 2018; Then-Obłuska and Wagner 2019), it is now more important than ever to examine their iconography, especially the relatively abundant Early Roman Face Beads, numbering in the hundreds, possibly low thousands (1430 by my most conservative estimate), in contrast to less then 30 of the Late Face Beads. Few Roman mosaic face beads were scientifically excavated like the recent finds, and these authors also subjected some of their face beads to compositional analysis, a technique applied to few face beads, begun back in the 1980s (Stout 1985). In addition, these recent excavations have revealed how such beads might have been used, for which we have had little data. Their findings may challenge the idea that face beads were always a luxury item.
Early Roman Egyptian face beads of approximately 100 B.C - A.D. 100 were widely distributed through Europe and the Middle and Near East. Recent finds place them in the Crimea, Yemen, Iran, Syria, Egypt, Nubia, and Croatia (Liu 2017; Sidebotham et al., 2015; Then-Obłuska 2015). Then-Obłuska and Wagner (2019) provide additional finds in Italy, Bahrain, Israel (?), Ethiopia (Aksum), Nubia (3 sites), and Berenike, Egypt; they show that Nubia and Egypt are rich in Early Roman Face Beads, with the former having surprising types of such beads. Other finds are described by Stout (1985) and Goldstein (1979): Early Face Beads from Poland, Italy, Sudan/Nubia, Germany, Crimea, Russia, Netherlands, Sweden, Czechoslovakia, Switzerland, Austria, Romania (Grumeza, pers. comm. 1/2022) and Late Face Beads from Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, and the Crimea, an area particularly rich in ancient beads, especially mosaic face beads (Alekseeva 1971, 1978, 1982; Figs. 13, 14A, 25 - 26, 28). Oddly, no face beads are found from the British Isles, despite the four centuries of Roman Occupation (S. Heaser, pers. comm. 5/20/2021).
Early Roman Mosaic Face Beads come in at least four primary shapes: tabular, spherical, barrel, and bulla-form; the last two configurations are very rare. Alekseeva (1982) shows a unique fifth type, as a pendant (Now in Hermitage Museum, L. Grumeza pers. comm. 2/2022). Because spherical, barrel and bulla-shaped beads are made on a mandrel, their vertical perforations are usually parallel to the axis of their mosaic images. Tabular beads, either the most common round form, the rarer square type or the unique rhomboid Nubian type, most likely all made from cane slices, are hot-pierced and can have either vertical or horizontal perforations. The hot-piercing process, where an iron rod is pushed through the hot glass of the tabular bead, is evident in Fig. 14A, as seen in broken beads by the distortion of the inner glass as it is pushed or pierced, although rarely is it possible to detect surface features changed by this process (Liu et. al., 2017; Fig. 26; Korom 2018: 26, Fig. 3, no.2).
Sizes of Roman mosaic face beads are not large, ranging between 1.1 to 2.5 cm diameters or widths. Spherical beads range from 1.25 to 2.5 cm diameters, tabular 1.1 to 1.6 cm diameters or widths, and 0.4 - 0.6 cm thick (Fig. 18). Korom (2018) provides the most detailed dimensional information on the Hungarian finds of tabular Gorgon face beads. Actual dimensional ranges may differ, as a number of measured specimens have been reground, thus reducing their actual former sizes. Many of the images studied were without dimensions, especially those from auctions. Weight information is lacking for all types of face beads. In addition, glass corrosion also reduces the weight and many tabular face beads are especially so effected.
The actual face sizes on spherical face beads range between 0.3 to 0.6 centimeters high, while those on tabular beads are larger, between 0.8 to 1.0 cm in height. Slices of the contemporaneous, larger theatre mask mosaics are about 3 centimeters tall, so there can be almost a thirty-fold difference in size (Fig. 12, 18). Their relationship is almost comparable to that of detailed drawings vs. stick-figure cartoons, with the latter demanding simplicity in order for the image to be legible at such a small size (Figs. 3, 3A, 12, 18). Fortunately, when the face cane is pulled to smaller diameters for use in beads, the facial features become attenuated or reduced in thickness, often resulting in sharper features, but all face bead images demand closeup observation to determine their identity.
Figure 6. Spherical bead with both Gorgon and Medusa (note rod hair remnants) images, reconstructed from chips of real face beads. RKL 4/97.5-31.b.
Figure 7. Spherical bead with canes of women with thick hair, but lacking necklace or hair ribbon, of which there are eight known images. Are these supposed to be Medusas; may not have been previously described in the literature? Courtesy of Victoria Shevchenko.
Figure 8, 8A. Rare spherical Courtesan bead, one of about three known, with fine fringe of hair on forehead and red ribbon in hair. After Yoshimizu 1989.
Figure 9. Spherical Courtesan bead, of second type, one of two identical offered from Chrisitie’s, New York auction, 6/3/1999 of ex. Sangiorg’s Collection, possibly the specimen owned now by the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Face cane may be broken and reconstructed. Note noses of beads in Figs. 8/9 have no medial line. Photograph courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MMA6/20 and RKL SCAN 11c.
Figure 10. Third type of spherical Courtesan bead, with no forehead fringe, and a yellow ribbon in the hair. After Yoshimizu 1989.
Since all the mosaic face canes may derive from one basic type that is most likely modified by the end user, the itinerant glass beadmaker, there is a marked similarity to all facial features, aside from the variations in the skill of the glass beadmaker and in the snake hair, woman’s hair, necklace, neck, and bust that are added. For example, the number of stylized snake hair, in the form of square or rectangular rods, may vary from 5 to 15. All the full frontal faces have eyebrows, eyes with pupils, nose and a simple mouth. Most pupils touch the upper side of the eye, with a few exceptions. The nose, connected to the eyebrows, is usually a black rectangle with a short medial black line dividing it at the tip, and frequently having short horizontal protrusions. However, this medial nasal line is lacking in a number of face canes (Figs. 1-3A, 4A-B, 8-11, 19, 21, 28-29). In only one face cane, that of Medusa, are there discernible nostrils (Fig. 4A). The mouth consists of an oval black cane, surrounded by a red outline, although this is reversed in some specimens and in some courtesan mosaic slices and beads (Figs. 10-11, 21-22, 24). In one of the Nubian barrel face bead and a courtesan bead, the mouth is only a red oval rod or a red line, while the mouth is all black on a recently excavated Hungarian specimen and in some Crimean examples (Figs. 20, 26).
The courtesan face cane, only found in three spherical beads, may represent a transition or bridge between face canes used on beads and the much larger, detailed and contemporaneous theatre masks, based on well-known characters in the Greek New Comedy by Menander (322-292 B.C.; Fig. 12). This is due to the presence of a few rare facial cane slices of courtesans intermediate in size and complexity of mosaic facial features (Fig. 11). This transition or bridge between face bead mosaics and theatre masks strongly suggests that the same workshops that made elaborate theatre mask mosaics also produced the more simple but much more abundant mosaic face canes for beads, although no canes (except 2 slices at the Freer) or workshops are extant, but mosaics/architectural glass borders have been recently found in Egypt (Silvano 2015).
Mirror-images of theatre masks, usually mechanically abutted or very rarely heat fused, were mounted in a frame of glass canes or bone, and adhered by adhesives to a wood box or inlaid into chests and furniture (Auth 1999, Tait 1991, Ueda 1981). The function or use of the rare intermediate mosaics of courtesans is unknown.
In Pompeii, tabular face beads of Gorgon have been found; interestingly, in a necropolis near that buried city, a tomb has been found of Secundio, a freedman, whose tomb inscriptions indicated he was a patron of the arts, paying for performances of Greek plays (Mead 2021). The Little Courtesan was a well-known character in such plays, explaining why such an image would appear on both Early Roman mosaic face beads and theatre mask mosaics.
Figure 11. Very rare clipped rectangular cane slices of a Courtesan, with conchoidal surfaces, fringe on forehead, red ribbon in hair, no medial line on nose, plaited hair dangles, in collections of Freer Gallery and MMA, with some of those in latter museum ground flat, each 2.2 cm high. Use unknown. RKL 315FM9.
Figure 12. Classic mosaic half theatre mask of Little Courtesan, with knotted ribbon in hair, fringe of hair on forehead, plaited hair down side of face and mouth of red around black mouth, like in many face beads; F1909.490, 3.1 cm high, Courtesy of the Freer Gallery, Liu 2017; RKL 315FM10. Insert of Fig. 3A, to show resemblance of Courtesan bead to Courtesan theatre mask, although bead image is very poor, they share fringe of hair on forehead and ribbon in hair.
Figure 13. Closeup of tabular Gorgon bead from the Crimea, showing the distinct block of the eyes, nose and eyebrows made as a unit. Note medial nasal line, slightly horizontal protrusions of nose, lack of nostrils and the red surrounding black mouth, reversed in a number of face beads and canes. 1.4 cm wide. RKL FM14b.
Figure 14. Two Syrian mosaics, of approximately same period (100 B.C.-A.D.100), showing composite floral canes on left mosaic versus right mosaic made by cold-bundling canes. Respectively F1909.512, 3.6 cm wide vs F1909.604, 2.8 cm wide. Courtesy of the Freer Gallery, Liu 2017.
Figure 14A. Broken tabular Gorgon bead from Crimea, showing the hot-piercing of the glass cane and distortion of the glass caused by metal rod. LS-8d.
Figure 15. Late Roman Face Bead, with one face cane visible, surface covered with pad of mosaic canes, pad-rolled and probably hot-pinched, as shown by stretched canes at the polar regions of bead, all drawn toward upper or lower perforation, when scissors like tool cut bead while glass was hot. Courtesy of Walker Qin from the Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg.
There are at least three distinct variants of courtesan face beads, although they are not very congruent with the three types of extant courtesan theatre masks, of which at least two have a ribbon in their hair, while the third has a crown (Liu 2008; Fig. 12). The rarity of the courtesan face beads makes it difficult to definitely confirm their identification, hampered by the poor quality of their facial mosaics and of the poor extant courtesan bead images. Of the three known courtesan beads, one example may have a reconstructed facial plaque (Fig. 9). None of the courtesan facial cane images wear necklaces and one type is distinguished by a band of red color in her hair, representing a ribbon, as well as having usually fine striations for hair on her forehead, which identifies her as the Little Courtesan with the greatest degree of certainty (Figs. 3-3A, 8-8A). An intermediate type has a ribbon in her hair, but no fine striations on her forehead, although her hair does extend down the sides of her face (Fig. 9). The third type of possible courtesan bead, is of a woman with thick hair and a band of color running through the hair, representing a ribbon, although she has fewer identifiable features linking her with courtesan theatre masks (Fig. 10). At least one bead of this type has Apis bull plaques filling the spaces intervening between the six face plaques of a woman with thick hair. Theatre masks of other female characters in the Greek New Comedy lack ribbons in their hair, like the Second False Maiden but otherwise look similar to the courtesans (Silvano 2015). Eight known spherical face beads depict a woman with thick hair, but lacking both necklace and hair ribbon, perhaps representing Medusa (Fig. 7).
The possible transitional courtesan mosaics are extremely rare, known as rectangular slices in two museums, the Freer Gallery and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and intermediate in size between theatre masks and face canes. These examples likely came from the same mosaic block (Fig. 11), while one different type is represented by a smaller, broken slice. These slices show a woman with a ribbon in her hair, fine hair striations on her forehead, and dangling locks of possibly plaited hair alongside the face; the broken slice also shows dangling locks but differs appreciably in color and details. Actual courtesan theatre masks have dangling, plaited locks alongside the face, contiguous with hair on top of her head, but of course much more detailed, including a knot to her hair ribbon (Fig. 12).
Selling figured courtesan beads (1942: Fig. 2, nos. 6, 13; Fig. 4, no. 12) of the Little Courtesan configuration but did not apparently recognize them as a distinct type. Apparently most of her study material came from the large Giorgio San Giorgis collection, Rome, sold at the Per-Neb auctions in the late 1990s, when at least two near identical courtesan beads like Fig. 9 were offered as nos. 81, in a lot of 17 face beads. Without having access to transitional canes of a courtesan or theatre mask courtesan mosaics, it might have been difficult for Selling to detect or differentiate this distinctive type of imagery (Figs. 3-3A, 8, 8A-11).
The placement of the face canes differ depending on which of the four primary physical forms of beads they are on. Whether Gorgon or Medusa, tabular beads usually have just one facial cane, with simple surrounds (Figs. 4-5, 13, 19-27), although rarer examples, especially square ones, can have elaborate additional decorations (Fig. 28). Some spherical beads have simple facial canes, often randomly placed, as well as the few barrel beads known. On most spherical beads and those of bulla-form, the facial canes and their surrounds are in a single register running on the equatorial plane of the bead (Figs. 1-3, 3A, 6-10, 28). In-between the face canes can be either other patches of colored glass, colored triangles, checker mosaics, or Egyptian motifs like mosaic lotus flowers and Apis bulls. Spherical Late Face Beads have overall mosaics on the surface, although they are often arranged in three roughly parallel registers (Fig. 15). Besides their decorative value, placing the facial canes in registers prevents distortion of their features when melted or marvered into the bead, as well as when fusing the mosaic pad for the Late Face Beads prior to pad-rolling into a bead. Volkman and Theune (2001: 527, Abb. 1) graphically show their process of pad-rolling, similar to how Late Face Beads may have been made. Mattsson and Hadsund (2007) have accurately replicated a Late Face Bead.
Figure 16
Figure 17
Figure 16. Contemporary face bead and cane made by Isis Ray; bead is 1.8 cm high, cane is 1.1 cm high. RKL 7/00.2-22, Liu 2008.
Figure 17. Contemporary face canes by Hulets, Kimura, Wilson (?), Stump, O’ Grady and Kimura; soft and borosilicate glass. 0.4-1.3 cm wide. RKL 8984A.
Stern and Schlick-Nolte (1994) proposed that the composite mosaic slices or bars of half theatre masks and full face bead canes are made with combinations of hotworked mosaic canes and composite mosaic bars (mosaic canes made of bundled cold elements and monochrome canes or rods, which are then bundled, fused and pulled to form the detailed faces). Auth (1999) has suggested possible sites for mosaic glass manufacture. With high resolution images, one can easily see the hot-layering of the glass, both in ancient and contemporary examples (Fig. 4A). By studying examples of mosaics and face beads by contemporary glass artists, as well as other ancient glass bead technology, like that used to make Indonesian mosaic Jatim beads, one can gain a better understanding of how they are made. For example, the stretching of the ends at the polar regions of Late Face Beads suggest they may have been hot-pinched. Although glass quality, colors, torches, and tools have improved, the basic conservative nature of glassworking means contemporary glass beadmakers still contribute to our knowledge of how ancient glass beadmakers worked. Both Stout (1985) and Volkmann and Theune (2001) have postulated methods of making Late Face Beads or Early Face canes, although the diagramed method for the latter does not conform to the iconography of any known Early Face Beads. All these authors propose pad rolling of mosaics for Late Face Beads, in which I and others like Jamey D. Allen concur, possibly with the addition of hot-pinching, as practiced with Jatim beads, discussed prior (Fig. 15).
Unfortunately, while a few other mosaic glasses have been excavated (Silvano 2015), no workshops for making these complex glasses have ever been found, nor have any face canes. All we have are the end products, the Early and Late Face beads, and two cane slices that may represent face canes of Gorgon and Medusa at an intermediate size (Liu 2008), as well as clearly contemporaneous beads that used similar canes with Egyptian themes such as lotus flowers, Apis bulls or a frieze-like decoration but lacking facial canes.
Figure 18
Figure 18. Array of Early Roman Mosaic tabular Face Beads/theatre masks and rare, unique spindle whorl with both Gorgon and Medusa faces (2cm diameter), showing relative sizes of these mosaics. Some of the tabular beads may be fakes. The square tabular bead shows Medusa image. Next to the theatre mask fragment is a rare heat-fused theatre mask. From a Study Gallery, Egyptian Department, Metropolitan Museum of Art. Photograph courtesy of the MMA. RKL 63515.
Figure 19. Tabular Gorgon face bead, from Hungary. Note red rod hair, yellow face, mouth red around black. Photograph by Nóra Szilágyi. Courtesy of Budapest History Museum- Aquincum Museum and Archaeological Park, 2011.2.118.79. Korom (2018) shows in Fig. 3, No. 2, one such bead with eyes obliterated by hot-piercing, like Fig. 26 below.
Figure 20. Tabular Gorgon face bead, with ventral blood arc, white face, unique long lock of hair on forehead, from Hungary (Korom 2018). Photograph by Nóra Szilágyi. Courtesy of Budapest History Museum- Aquincum Museum and Archaeological Park, 2011.2.118.81.
Figure 21. One of four tabular Gorgon beads recently excavated from Nubia, which may be from same cane; these came from a site dated AD 400-500 but were recognized by Then-Obłuska as older beads that had been re-used or as heirlooms. They are unique in having a red surrounding the yellow facial skin, with the red an integral part of the stylized snake hair, and a mouth reversed from the standard colors. Courtesy of Then-Obłuska SJE, MAUS.
Figure 22. Round tabular Gorgon bead with well-defined ventral blood arc, and reversed mouth colors of black around red, found in a rubbish dump, Berenike, Egypt. Courtesy of Then-Obłuska 2018, Sidebotham et al., 2015.
In addition, there are two very rare glass spindle whorls bearing face canes, with one having both Gorgon and Medusa face canes and contemporaneous with Early Face Beads because of the similarity of style and components (Fig. 18). The existence of this glass textile tool, with both types of face canes (one Medusa, eight Gorgon), as well as many fragments of checkers, often used in face beads, indicates that the workshop or the beadmaker that made this whorl had at hand both types of face canes, as well as the checker mosaics often used for face beads. The practice of having available all the types of already made glass components ready to use is what one would expect of any glass beadmaker, ancient or contemporary, especially since many of the components would have to be pre-heated at the furnace, to prevent temperature shock, prior to use on the bead.
Besides face beads and the two very rare glass spindle whorls that had either Gorgon, Medusa or both types of face canes, at least one Roman mosaic patella bowl had four face canes of Medusa on the bottom of its inside surface, clear indication that it was probably contemporaneous with Early Roman Face Beads (Bruhn 1995, Goldstein 1979). Therefore mosaic face canes were used in at least three glass contexts: face beads (Early and Late), spindle whorls and patella bowls.
Figure 26
Figure 23. Tabular Gorgon bead, with blood arc to left side of head, example of poor crafting of face cane. After Sarpellon 1990: Fig. 22.
Figure 24. Tabular Gorgon bead, with Grecian freize around face, instead of hair bundles, described by Alekseeva 1971 as curly hair. From RKL scanned database.
Figure 25. Tabular Gorgon bead, same source as those in Fig. 26, with hair bundles around most of face, with small blood arc, resulting in sunburst appearance.
Figure 26. Group of tabular Early Roman Mosaic Face Beads from Crimea, which might be from the same cane, and the face of the most right-hand bead has been damaged by the hot-piercing process, which almost destroyed one eye. Courtesy of the Harbaugh collection. RKL 315FM21a.
Figure 27. Lozenge or rhomboid shaped tabular bead, with Gorgon as a woman with bust, black line necklace, from Nubia, with unique snake bundle hair, flesh-colored face/bust. She is most likely meant to be a Medusa, perhaps requested by the Nubians from the source workshop in Egypt. The unique shape of the bead is most likely done locally by Nubians (Then-Obłuska pers. comm.) Ca. 1.2 x 1.5. Courtesy of Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Liu 2017.
Figure 28. Square tabular Early Roman Mosaic Face Bead of Medusa, with necklace, black hair merging into background black glass, bundled-rod checker surround, from Crimea; 1.6 cm wide. RKL 315FM4a.
Figure 29. Spherical face bead with cane of Gorgon hot-worked into Medusa, with overlaid hair not entirely hiding the rods representing Gorgon’s snake hair. At least 6-7 such beads exist, demonstrating how imprecise glassworking can reveal important diagnostic information (Liu 2017). Courtesy of Walker Qin, Beijing Bead Museum and Library.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank colleagues Lavinia Grumeza, Sue Heaser, Anita Korom/The Budapest History Museum and Joanna Then-Obłuska for sharing information and/or images, as well as the many others with whom I have discussed the myriad problems associated with the iconography of Roman mosaic face beads in the past four decades. Ann Stout, Jamey Allen, Victoria Shevchenko and Torben Sode also supplied critical images/information and Patrick R. Benesh-Liu helped in gathering a database of face beads from about 1010 auctions. The Freer Gallery of Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art permitted me to study and take photographs of their mosaic face beads and related mosaic glasses, published in prior Ornament articles. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts also enabled me to study, photograph and publish their collection of unique Nubian face beads.
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Contemporary
Glass Beadmaking
Robert K. Liu is Coeditor of Ornament, for many years its in-house photographer, as well as a jeweler using alternative materials like heatbent black bamboo and polyester fibers. His last book, The Photography of Personal Adornment, covers forty-plus years of shooting jewelry, clothing and events related to wearable art, both in and out of the Ornament studio. A lifetime avocation of scale modelmaking culminates in the publication this year of a book on naval ship models of World War II, published in the United Kingdom. Chinese faience, composites and glass, both ancient and ethnographic, are among some of his research interests, as well as Roman mosaic face beads, for which he has written an article on their iconography, naming for the first time a new type of facial imagery, that of a courtesan, shown since the 1940s but not identified until now, as a two part article. His commitment to bead research echoes back to Ornament’s beginnings as the Bead Journal, and his fascination with this ancient form of adornment continues to this day.
