bead

The revitalization of the mosaic technique by Roman glassmakers led to the creation of one of the best-known types of mosaic beads: the face bead. The primary feature of these beads is the miniature human faces painstakingly rendered through the cold bundling of rods or the hot working of pre-made parts to form the visage, which was then stretched to make a cane that could produce, in sliced sections, identical faces. The typical face has dark eyebrows, a square nose, dark eyes, a brownish red mouth, and white skin. This facial design can be well dated to between the first century B.C. and the first century A.D., a relatively short production period. Some face beads display bare shoulders, and these usually include a necklace, allowing us to conclude that these are depictions of females, while the genders of those portrayed in other face beads cannot be determined. Face beads were produced in a spherical shape (e.g., 62.1.25), with more than one cane slice placed around the center of the bead on a wound matrix, or simply as an individual cane slice that was perforated. Another motif utilizing the mosaic technique was the checkerboard pattern (e.g., 72.1.10). This type has been found in inlays dating as early as the fourth century B.C., often from Egyptian contexts. Examples of the checkerboard pattern in mosaic beads are also dated to the eighth century A.D., suggesting that the motif was produced for an extended period. The bead shown here is a square slice of a cane that combines the checkerboard design and the female face, including the shoulders and a necklace. The face and background are slightly off-center against the checkerboard, which covers all four corners of the bead. The bead is complex and distinctive, a true masterpiece of the mosaic technique.