Stella Mutegi: As we were preparing for the Biennale, we realized we both seem to be doing work on beads. Our work mainly focused on the materiality of beadwork in different communities in Kenya and its evolution following colonialism. We noticed you’re developing a research project on glass beads to help understand previously disconnected architectural environments linking to the British Empire, and became curious where each of our works may intersect or diverge. How did you first come across beads in your research?
Eva Branscome: Glass beads are really fascinating. Once you start researching them, you wonder why more people don’t talk about beads. I first became interested in this topic when preparing for a conference about the legacies of the British Empire in relation to the built environment. We were looking at infrastructures, such as trade and industry, education, militarized spaces, agriculture and landscape, and various other themes related to colonial architecture and its heritage, and I came across a text that was talking about trade beads in Africa. It wasn't necessarily linked to architecture, but I became completely captivated. In early childhood, we often learn about the evils of the transatlantic slave trade, and that it was based on this kind of trickery to exchange human beings for glass beads. What I came to understand was that most of the trade beads that made their way to Africa were originally produced in Venice. The majority of beads that the British used for the slave trade in West Africa, and for trade generally also in East Africa, were produced there. It is important to realize that the idea of these as “worthless trinkets” connects to the devaluation of humans. But glass beads were not and are not worthless. We need to take them far more seriously and start understanding what they actually meant.
Sandra Nzioki: We are currently trying to bring more vernacular material beads back from Africa to Venice in order to challenge the local perception of glass beads. A big reason for this is to highlight not just vernacular techniques, but also traditional attitudes towards ornamentation of the body and the self. The Maasai community, for example, use red ochre as a way of decorating the body during ceremonies such as rites of passage, a time of transformation from childhood to adulthood in the eyes of the community. We wanted to adapt this in the form of terracotta beads and use them to decorate or ornament the British Pavilion. But using terracotta was also a strategy for mitigating the challenges we faced when trying to source the red glass beads we originally envisioned. Do you think there’s a particular reason glass beads are no longer so prevalent in Venice?
EB: I have found that Venetians like to talk about beautiful chandeliers, beautiful goblets, little figurines—the luxurious side of glass art production. But they don't necessarily want to talk about glass beads, and particularly not trade beads. Since the 1980s, the production of glass beads in Murano has also drastically declined.
SM: Glass beads still have value in Africa, but they are quickly becoming overshadowed by plastic beads coming from China that are saturating the market. They are just much cheaper to produce, but these beads leave traces of microplastics and become increasingly dangerous to marine life when discarded—unlike glass beads, which when discarded will eventually be reduced back to sand-like particulates.
EB: Glass is a very stable material, which is one of the main things that contributed to the historical value of beads produced of this substance. It is like gold in that it doesn't deteriorate easily. If you wear glass on your body, it doesn't turn your skin green like brass might. In Europe, when Venice was making glass beads, they were often worn as jewelry in substitution for more precious gems. They were also used in religious practice as rosaries, for example, again in substitution for more valuable stones. In Africa at the time, however, there was not the knowledge of the chemistry involved in creating glass. This gave glass its enormous value, and ultimately led to glass beads being traded and exchanged like coinage. In this sense, they were never just trinkets. Glass beads also come in different colors, which have different meanings when used as ornamentation and would be transferred to the person wearing them. Across all cultures, but perhaps most prominently in Africa, beads signified importance; they showed status. They also often had a spiritual meaning; they were used to protect the wearer from evils.
SM: How has the understanding of these previous attitudes towards currency and coinage influenced your research on beads?
EB: Once I understood why the beads worked like currency, as well as jewelry, I started to look at where evidence of the history of these beads can be found today. The British Museum holds sample bead cards, and the V&A and the Pitt Rivers Museum both have a collection of trade beads. Similar bead cards are also at the museum in Murano, where it says “Africa.” On the ones that are in the British Museum, it shows the beads that were traded for ivory, for palm oil, for gold, and then slaves. They are on different cards with different bead sets. But then I realized that another place where Venetian beads can be found in London is actually in the mud of the River Thames. There are lots of warehouses and docks along the Thames, but perhaps because the beads were stable, once they arrived from Venice, they were just unloaded from ships onto lighter boats, where they then stayed waiting to be transferred onto ships headed to Africa. Sometimes they just fell overboard, or somebody would walk away with a hank of strung beads, and it would burst. So, you can still find them on the shores of the Thames today. There are groups of people that do this as a kind of hobby. I'm interested in the context of their location, that they're part of the city, part of the mud, and also appear in the records as trade goods, being insured, being part of the bills of lading, and how they then appear in our archives.
SN: I imagine these beads show up all over, not just in London and in Venice.
EB: Absolutely. Beads show up in the soil in West Africa near what were called slave factories, in Bunce Island for example. You find them in the United States where they got stuck in between floorboards of a grand colonial home; you find them off the coast in shipwrecks, and again, in archaeological digs. I am particularly interested in links that glass beads have in terms of the Palladian architecture in Venice and the Veneto and neo-Palladian architecture that then shows up again as plantations of the American South. Venetian glass trade beads were found in the soil of one of Thomas Jackson's plantations. And so, I am also looking at this style of architecture that moves around from one cultural or historic and geographical context to another. I am particularly interested in how the buildings were financed through the exploitation of free slave labor linking back to the architectures directly related to the production and sale of glass beads as embodied evidence of wealth.
European glass beads found on the wreck site of the Henrietta Marie. Photo: Dylan Kibler. Source: Mississippi Christian Living.
SN: It'd be interesting to hear you elaborate on the role that red beads played, not just in the colonial trade system, but in how they were perceived by African communities at that time.
EB: I can’t say exactly, but there is this shipwreck beyond the southern tip of Florida, the Henrietta Marie, which sank in 1700. Lots of glass beads have been found on board over the years. There's also a record that shows how many beads were originally laden on that ship. What is noticeable is that there's not a single red bead among what has been recovered from the shipwreck. The thousands of beads are blue, black, green, yellow, but there are none in red. The absence of red beads suggests that those were the beads that were traded in West Africa, while the other beads were rejected. The beads were brought from Venice to London, then on to West Africa, and from there to the “New World.” But the beads that were found in the wreck of the Henrietta Marie were only there because they weren’t already traded. However, reddish glass beads the color of coral have been found in graves on the island of St. Helena in the mid-Atlantic. Red beads showed up in St. Helena after the slave trade had been abolished. At this time, British and American ships were patrolling the west coast of Africa for vessels that were still laden with enslaved people on their way to the New World. If slavers were intercepted, the Africans on board were confiscated. But this all happened in the mid-Atlantic, so these people were not returned to Africa: they were taken to St. Helena to be brought back to health. After that they were re-transported to the British colonies in the Caribbean to work on plantations as indentured laborers. Many died on board due to the awful conditions, or died once they arrived on St. Helena because they were just too weak. So, there are graveyards in St. Helena where they've recently found glass beads, and many of them were of a coral-red color. Slavers would often try to lure young women on board with the promise of glass beads, or once on board give them out for “favors.” And in Africa, there was always an interest in decorating headdresses and other items with corals coming from the sea, which are also a reddish color. In terms of glass production, to make the color red, you need to use gold in the chemical formulation. Red glass is more expensive.
SM: Prior to the introduction of glass, beads in Africa made from different things like the bones of animals or ivory, for example. Seeds, in particular, were very common. Do you think that the depreciation and natural decay of these other, organic beads—both physically and within collective memory—has happened because of their lack of perceived value in comparison to glass beads?
EB: Absolutely. But tiny glass beads are today called “seed beads” because of this history, that people used to string up seeds as beads. There were also wooden beads. People still make beads out of these materials, but if they get wet, they deteriorate. You could also dye plant-based beads, but they would not have that brilliance of colored glass. Glass beads that are several hundreds of years old are still exactly the same color that they were when first produced.
Venetian glass red beads found on St. Helena found in an individual burial. Screenshot of St Helena Tourism, “St Helena Museum - Liberated Africans artifacts,” October 29, 2020. Source: Youtube.
SN: One of the reasons why we’ve been so interested in red beads in particular is because of their association with lions, both the lions in Africa and Kenya, but also the lion of Venice—the Biennale lion is red. But lions are actually colorblind. So, the color red was intensely adapted by the Maasai, among whom there were the group of Moran warriors who would go out to hunt lions, wearing red. The red would function as a symbol of their bravery, but it would also offer protection. Red does not just show that you have this innate strength; it also shows that you're able to shield yourself in a practical sense from the animal that you're hunting.
SM: Yes, Maasai still use red as a primary color in their clothing. If you see a Maasai, they'll be in three colors: red, blue, and white. But red is predominant. Red symbolized your courage, that you were a brave warrior. Today this rite of passage is not the same as in the past where at a certain age young Maasai boys would go out into the wild, kill a lion, and bring it back to the village to show their courage and be considered men. Yet the use of the color red is still a very strong symbol. There’s been an evolution of sorts, from what the red symbolized then to what red symbolizes now. Do you think there has been a similar evolution in beads?
EB: In Murano, they have quite good records of which types of beads were produced. They continued to mass produce glass beads in Murano into the 1980s when it became financially unfeasible, also because there were concerns about the health and safety of workers. For a long time, this work was associated with very cheap child labor. There were boys working in the factories near the kilns with molten glass at very high temperatures. The mass production of beads has now mostly migrated to other countries such as India and China, where there are less regulations on the working processes.
SN: You mentioned that glass beads also had a mystical, almost spiritual attraction for Africans. Previously, they were used in this very ceremonial way, and people wouldn't wear beads every day. They were reserved for special occasions. But there's been this shift in the narrative where, due to tourism, there's almost this neocolonialism where beadwork is now being made for the purpose of selling to tourists. The societal connection that has to do with ritual has been eclipsed by their aesthetic appeal, as well as generally symbolizing Africa at large. There is a lot of positivity that comes from the use of these cultural narratives for economic liberation, but it equally brings a lot of harm. All this knowledge, of making beadwork and conveying deeper cultural meanings, as well as how this meaning relates to an individual’s choice to wear the beads, has been lost. There's no longer a culture of expressing one’s self or beliefs through this materiality. It's essentially become a capitalistic venture. So, we have to be careful in thinking about how these materials evolve with their deeper cultural meanings still intact. Do you think that there was also that mystical element even from the European perspective?
EB: Yes, Venice initially produced glass beads that looked like crystals, ones that looked like different colored precious stones and even pearls. That was their initial worth, this imitation of a more valuable and rare material. People on pilgrimage took glass rosaries that they bought in Venice, which were much cheaper than stone ones, eastwards during the crusades. These glass beads then became a popular trading item moving with the caravans on to the Far East, as well as coming down into East Africa. This was before they became popular with the British as part of their transatlantic slave trade going into West Africa. The earlier trade was towards the East, actually.
SM: You touched a bit on the slave trade and its connection to colonialism, especially in Africa. I wonder whether colonialism had any impact on the production and trade of the beads?
EB: Yes, there is correspondence about British traders being annoyed with the Venetians because the Venetians closed their factories due to holidays and were not supplying the beads that they ordered.1 Venice gets very hot in summer, so production stopped for a month or so in August—it still does today. But back in Britain, the ships were waiting for this freight, which was of such great value in terms of their trading infrastructure that they couldn’t sail without it. The British had all of this knowledge about the cycles of the trade winds and the weather at sea, but this did not link up well with the cyclical hot weather in Murano.
SM: I guess the recipients of the beads, the Africans, were also waiting while Venice took a break.
EB: That would have been another issue to do with scarcity, which only would have added to the value of the glass beads in Africa. I’ve been reading a lot of historical material on what was loaded onto these ships, which of course wasn’t just glass beads, but also fabric, iron bars, and alcohol, which often came in glass bottles. Once empty, Africans would smash the bottles and melt the glass down to produce their own beads, as a kind of recycling process. But the African slave traders that were capturing people inland and bringing them to the coast to trade with the ships also didn’t only want glass beads. They wanted mixed wares, including guns, brass basins, knives, hats, fishhooks, and bells. Also rum and tobacco, which was controlled by Britain and came via the Americas. This triangular slave trade of people, objects, and processed goods, relied on a certain type of knowledge of what to trade in geographically disjointed locations. But I don’t think that the Brits ever quite understood the value of red beads to people in Kenya.
SM: How do you think your research can enlighten the public’s understanding of colonial histories?
EB: I'm interested in bringing things full circle within Venice itself. First letting the story of the glass beads spread out via London and into West Africa, then showing up in the Colonial Americas, in the shipwrecks, in the earth, in between floorboards, and then even following the abolition of the slave trade, but then letting it come back again in Venice’s industrial processes. This can be read in the architecture and streetscape, in the specific typologies of spaces within Murano that were designed specifically for manufacturing beads, or the neighborhoods where impoverished women, the “impiraressa,” would sit on the main island of Venice stringing together the beads so they could be transported while watching their children. These complicated histories might allow glass beads to reacquire cultural value to the extent that a museum like the British Museum, might actually show the objects they have and explain these more complex and culturally rich stories.
Saul Guerrero, “Venetian Glass beads and the Slave Trade from Liverpool, 1750–1800," BEADS: Journal of the Society of Bead Researchers 22 (2010): 52–70.