Pitting and Age of Hudson Bay Beads - a question

[Learning4Life]

Does the pitting on these Red Whiteheart beads indicate anything about age or history? These beads are about 3mm. I can't find any resources with specifics about pitting or patina on glass beads of any origin. Can I use pitting to be certain about any characteristics of these beads? For example, is pitting a distinctive quality of unearthed beads, ancient beads, or both?

 

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[Learning4Life]

Reproduction bead.
Anything "Hudson Bay" has been plagiarized to death by sellers.

Original beads were not so exact in color.

Not so exact in color, like these?

 

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[Learning4Life]

White hearts maybe.
I'd be reluctant to call them H.B. beads. Or old.

The orange peel I haven't noticed on beads. New or old, buried or worn.
I suspect an agent in the process of making reproduction beads on the cheap. A release agent or something.
In paint , oils or other contaminants can do that.

Without knowing who made them and thier recipe and process it's a guess. They should certainly know though.

Glass window plate used to come from it being floated on tin as it began to cool. (Float Glass.)
Wouldn't imperfections from that surface of the molten metal show?
No , I don't know of beads made that way , but there's a lot unknown about your samples creation.

Thank you for the response. Yes lots of unknown indeed, I don't know anything about them. Just a thought: I know indonesia had a thing for reproducing beads, could these be Java bead knock-offs? The collection that they were intermingled with had a lot of beads from borneo, specifically Kalimantan Dayak beads.

 

[Learning4Life]

Does the pitting on these Red Whiteheart beads indicate anything about age or history? These beads are about 3mm. I can't find any resources with specifics about pitting or patina on glass beads of any origin. Can I use pitting to be certain about any characteristics of these beads? For example, is pitting a distinctive quality of unearthed beads, ancient beads, or both?
View attachment 2171221

 

[CreekSide]

Hi I'm here.

Glad you returned.

 

[Learning4Life]

Glad you returned.

Thanks! I added some more photos. Maybe there are more clues. One other thing: the collection these came from had a few examples of Java bead reproductions of italian glass trade beads. However, the Java bead reproductions that I've seen before were of much larger beads/bead styles.

 

[Learning4Life]

FWIW here are the antique white heart beads sold on bead chest. I see similar features.

 

[Tpmetal]

Very interesting thank you.

It has been a while since I took chemistry, but wouldn't rates of devitrification be multivariate? Not just dependent on T, but also other chemical processes? Off the top of my head, suppose glass were buried in a more acidic environment, or any hypothetical environment that leeches SiO2.

Devitrification is only based on when the glass is at its softening or melting point. So basically what happens is impurities on the surface of glass at those temps caused a crystalline structure to form when cooling. This can be avoided by moving rapidly through those temp ranges when cooling until you reach your annealing soaking temp. It can also be avoided by making sure those impurities do not exist in the first place.

 

[Tpmetal]

The more I look at these new photos the more inclined I am leaning towards pulled beads that were tumbled and fire polished. I think you are on the right track.

A fire polish process.
Good mention.
And potential suspect I hadn't considered.
(But I ran them at 1100! l.o.l.)