Mad in Pursuit Notebook
Tibet: the Biggest Bead
When I was at my height of bead collecting, Jim bought this Tibetan necklace for himself.* He liked to brag that he owned the biggest bead.
Maybe he felt the need for that giant turquoise, prized by Tibetans for its ability to absorb negative energy and toxins and to restore good health. The other beads are silver, coral, lapis lazuli, and Bakelite (the "amber")**. They are strung on red wool cord.
The Tibetan woman who once wore this would have been a nomad, who wore her family's fortune of precious imported coral and lapis, plus the outrageous turquoise, as they moved from place to place with their herds. Their wealth was both worldly and spiritual.
Notes
*1994, E&J Frankel, Manhattan. They said it came to them from a Tibetan family.
**Bakelite (aka phenolic resin) was the first synthetic plastic, invented in 1907 and extremely popular in the early 20th century.
4 Mar 2026
All pages in this website by Susan Barrett Price are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.