Kiffa Beads from Africa

BackgroundKiffa beads are rare glass beads named after the Mauritanian city of Kiffa.Kiffa beads represent one of the highest levels of artistic skill and ingenuity in beadmaking, being manufactured with the simplest materials and tools available: pulverized European glass beads or fragments of them, bottle glass, pottery shards, tin cans, twigs, steel needles, some gum arabic, and open fires.The making of powder glass beads in West Africa may date back a few hundred years, and to possibly 1200 CE in Mauritania. Maure powder glass beads are believed to copy older, Islamic beads, of the type made in Fustat and elsewhere. The making of Mauritanian powder glass beads appears to be an ancient tradition.ProductionGlass is finely crushed to a powder and mixed with a binder such as saliva or gum arabic diluted in water. Decorations are made from the glass slurry (crushed glass mixed with a binder and applied with a pointed tool, usually a steel needle). The beads are placed in small containers, often sardine cans and heated to fuse the glass on open fires.Kiffa beads are made in various shapes and colors: blue, red, and polychromatic triangles with yellow, black, white, red and blue chevron-type and decorations that resemble eyes; blue, red and polychromatic diamond shaped beads; cigar shaped and conical beads as well as a variety of small spherical and oblate beads. Color sequences observed on traditional beads with polychromatic decorations are always the same, i.e. red-yellow-black (dark brown)-yellow-red-white-blue-white. For their wearers, all these beads held amuletic properties. The colous, shapes and the many different intricate decorative patterns all having specific meanings, most of them forgotten today.Modern beadsWith the passing of the last of the remaining traditional bead makers during the 1970s, the craft became extinct. Since the early 1990s, organized groups of women bead makers are again making Kiffa beads, using basically the same traditional methods. The craftsmanship of the new beads, however, has not reached the high standards and the quality that can be observed in the old beads. Hopefully with practice and a viable market for the beads this new generation of beadmakers can continue to improve their craft. Western artists have made their own versions in polymer clay or lampworked glass, but none of the modern creations gee close to resembling the beauty of traditional specimens. The same applies to modern imitations made elsewhere, such as in Indonesia.If you find Kiffa beads be sure to buy some and wear them with pride!