11mm Vintage Dark Purple White Heart Beads

Product Details

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These are exceptionally large, old white heart beads in a deep, rich purple.  It's not frequent to find such large, deeply colored white heart beads, so we couldn't pass them up.  These are the real ones, the old ones.  They fall under the designation of African trade beads. White heart beads, sometimes called "Cornaline D’aleppo" were made in Venice in the 19th century and were extensively traded throughout Africa.  "Cornaline D’aleppo" stuck as a title as so many were traded through Aleppo through the 19th century en route to their distrubution throughout the continent of Africa.  They are called white hearts because they all have a core of white glass, overwhich a jacket of another color is applied.  These have a deep garnet or pomagranate color over their white hearts.  The photo shows them to be lighter in color than they actually are.  The color is deeper than the photo. They measure about 11mm in diameter, but there is some variation from bead to bead due to the process by which they are made.  They start as a big bubble and gets pulled out into a long tube then gets cut into beads