Indigenous African Beadwork Distinctions
I love looking at African beaded jewelry through the lens of what makes it culturally distinct as someone living in the diaspora- which is relevant bc when you look up ‘beaded jewelry’ you get NA Indigenous designs and white people’s interpretation of said designs, mostly. The prior isn’t a gripe, since I’m currently living on/in Turtle Island and that’s the Indigenous culture here. As someone with African heritage though and as a bead artist, the differences are of course really important. Pattern and symbol have cultural meanings and we always have to know what we are doing and what we aren’t doing; and as someone in the African diaspora specifically through enslavement there’s some nuance as far as what I will do and what I won’t, what I have ties to and what I still do slightly differently out of respect and because I am also free from certain constraints.
On the one hand, African beadwork is distinguished from TI beadwork by pattern (though certain patterns like the rainbow, which is pretty much universally a Big Deal and which features heavily in various African Indigenous cultures, still show up) and thus color. There’s also the fact that only *some* of African beadwork is done with small beads and plenty of it actually relies on large / pony beads moreso than I usually see with NA Indigenous beadwork. Like Ifa eleke need large beads-
And otherwise there are lots of similarities because Indigenous People Doing Stuff With Beads often follows a similar logic wherever there are beads. So we also:
Though a lot of times we go CHONKY w it:
But one of the things I think is really distinct and I love a lot since I’ve been working with this material since I was a kid, is the addition of wire as a beading element leading to the concept of African beading including lots of collars and earrings with structures owing themselves to the addition of wire (especially in Maasai collars). Like:
And I’m curious as to when it became a cultural staple or what would have been used before wire, bc I know there are other things like horse hair for instance that can to a point provide the firm, springy form achieved here.
Another thing that definitely stands out is the breast piece collars & capes
especially Zulu beadwork-
Of course there’s always:
Before I go, this post features primarily Maasai and Zulu beadwork, here is some Xhosa all of which is incredibly fleeky bc Xhosa color combos are icy af but looking at the collars always reminds me how many of the old pieces are still in museums
Of course my whole point here is exemplified by the fact that when I looked up ‘ndebele stitch’ to give an example for the end of this post, I find this:
And it’s like… you know I’ll give that techniques can travel and spawn bc they’re a result of action and geometry and eventually ppl in other places will derive similar approaches and actions through shared human consciousness. I’m not mad that a 2 bead pattern is being done by someone else…but you….literally called it the Ndebele pattern…on your little animal print bracelet…smh.
ANYWAY! That’s been a rant on African beads I guess!
