Master makers

Seaman Schepps uses multi-baroque, multi-coloured beads to create an exuberant profusion of over-the-top designs. With pastel-colour gemstones consisting of aquamarines, citrines, amethysts, peridots, chalcedony, and pink tourmalines, it’s a delicious hodge-podge and mish-mash—faceted cuts jostle with polished, round are placed beside elongated, flattened between spherical, etc. Colour and shape juxtapose brilliantly on so many levels, with a few pearls and tiny diamonds blended in for good measure. A more sedate necklace contains a repeated series of rubies, sapphires, and emeralds. They’re the luxe versions of one of those edible candy bead necklaces strung on a stretchy piece of elastic.

Marina B uses chunky clusters of polished gold beads for necklaces and earrings in a variation of the popular theme. Lapis beads form a distinctive floral cluster in a pair of earrings designed by Jean Schlumberger for Tiffany & Co., and David Webb’s coral bead Maltese cross brooches from the 1970s are inspired by nature.

Shapes, sizes, and styles

Gemstone beads are usually spherical, yet many are oval, flattened, elongated, briolette, cubed, drum-shaped, tubular, or carved—the list is endless. If you sliced a bead in half, you would have yourself a couple of usable cabochons. Beads can be the minute size of a peppercorn like the tiny floating lapis lazuli bead that rests between rock crystal frames in a Cartier pendant. Beads can be separated by knots or by decorative rondelles made from stones like rock crystal and onyx. Lengths can be choker, collier, opera, and the longer sautoir. A necklace may comprise a single row or multiple strands arranged in random, graduated, or uniform size. Designers favour extremes, from the palest pastel of pink morganite to the deepest dramatic tones of a multi-strand coral torsade and in-between, the graduated shadings of ombre, from darkest to lightest or vice versa. Contrasting black and white ideas can be punctuated with clear crystals.

Popular gem choices for beadwork are typically those without the refractory properties of light that give diamonds their special illumination. Picture opaque to semi-opaque jadeite, turquoise, lapis, tiger’s eye, amber, chalcedony, opal, banded agate, the extensive quartz family, and before the rules changed regarding endangered species, coral and ivory.