Raspberry Beads

Hi Fort Friends and Fellow Bead Enthusiasts,

A clear raspberry bead pictured with several seed
beads, lead shot, and an actual seed!

It is no secret that the Fort St. Joseph site has been home to many beads, particularly small glass seed beads. But there are plenty of other kinds of glass beads that have been found as well. One of these types is the raspberry bead, sometimes also known as a mulberry bead. To my delight, this bead lives up to its name and indeed looks like a raspberry. In fact, if you look up “raspberry bead”, you will find that people still make them today and sometimes very much lean into the “berry” aspect of the bead. But I digress!

Let us start with the basics. Firstly, a raspberry bead is a type of wound bead. To make wound beads, strands of molten glass are wrapped around a “mandrel”--a steel or copper rod. While the glass is warm the bead is made into the desired shape. A coating on the mandrel allows the bead to slide off when the shaping is completed and then boom, you have your lovely bead!

Kenneth E. Kidd and Martha A. Kidd developed a bead classification system for field archaeologists. Their system classifies the raspberry bead as “WIId”. In this system, the W stands for wire-wound and the raspberry bead is home amongst other handcrafted bead types such as the melon or faceted types. If you look at the chart, though, you will see that several colors are listed for the raspberry bead. All of them are clear or translucent but Kidd and Kidd include colors such as amber, ultramarine, and amethyst. These are very cool, but it is important to note that many of the raspberry beads that have been found at the Fort St. Joseph site have been clear (WIId1). 

An illustration from the Kidd and Kidd raspberry bead classification.

What is not clear is where exactly these beads would have been made. We know they came from Europe for sure. A lot of glass beads were made in Venice, Italy, but it was not the only place these glass beads were coming from. Some could have come from France itself, as the Jardins du Carrousel collection in Paris suggests. Also, raspberry beads have been found at some sites associated with the Dutch in places such as Louisiana, leading some to think they were made in Amsterdam, but there has not been sufficient evidence for this.

Thanks for stopping by to read about these very cool beads! 

Abbey

References:

Dogon wound trade beads. The Bead Chest. (n.d.). Retrieved from 

      https://www.thebeadchest.com/pages/wound-trade-beads

Karklins, Karlis (2012). Guide to the description and classification of glass beads found in the 

americas. BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 24: 62-90. Available at: https://surface.syr.edu/beads/vol24/iss1/8 

Kidd, K. E., & Kidd, M. A. (1970). A classification system for glass beads for the use of field 

      archaeologists. Canadian Historic Sites: Occasional Papers in Archaeology and History, 

      No. 1, National and Historic Parks Branch Department of Indian Affairs and Northern 

      Development, Ottawa. Retrieved from http://parkscanadahistory.com/series/chs/1/chs1-2a.htm

Turgeon, Laurier. (2001). French beads in France and Northeastern North America during the sixteenth century. Historical archaeology. 35. 58-82. 10.1007/BF03373652