Mike’s desire to create glass beads based on archaeological finds was partly triggered by time spent in York over the past several years, which included several visits to the Yorkshire Museum and Gardens which houses a collection of finds from excavations in and around York itself. Included in the museum collection are a number of glass beads, ranging from the Iron Age, Romano-British, early Anglo-Saxon and on through the Viking era.
Further research into finds from Britain, including the British Museum holdings and other museums across the country and various scholarly texts considered the best in the field of ancient British glass beads gave Mike the impetus he needed to work on producing glass beads based on these historic beads.
The result is the ‘Mancunium’ range of glass beads created for people who want to own a small piece of history in the making. At present we have concentrated on the early part of British history, ranging from pre-Iron Age to the end of the Viking era. There are many other beads to research but we felt it was best to keep to a narrower time range to begin so that we could provide the best information possible to those wishing to purchase beads with historic roots.
As a contemporary beadmaker, Mike uses modern materials and equipment to produce his beads. The equipment used has changed significantly over the past four thousand years but the techniques remain essentially the same, molten glass is wound around a mandrel, layered or decorated with other colours of molten glass, allowed to cool and then used in jewellery or other means of adornment and embellishment. It is not possible for the beadmaker to exactly re-create the materials without a lot of specialist equipment, but modern soda-lime glass produced in such glassmaking centres as Murano, Germany and Britain are close enough to the original glass to be indistinguishable to the average person. The techniques and beads themselves are created to be one artist’s work, and would stand up against any other beadmaker whose work has been studied during our research. Mike believes that each independent glass beadmaker, either historic or modern has an individual style, it is obvious in the beads in various collections that styles range from the extremely skilled to the barely capable, no two beadmakers will produce the identical beads, each one will have at least subtle variations in decoration, shape, size or style.
Modern beadmakers pride themselves on their individual styles, it is very easy to view a selection of art glass beads from a dozen modern artists and be able to pick out each artists’ style, and so it must have been for ancient beadmakers too. The beads Mike produces are not exact copies of historic beads, instead they are his version of what he would have made were he alive in York in 1021 or Wilderspool in the 1st century AD.
There is a bewildering, fabulous, amazing array of beads to be inspired by, it is impossible to present even a fraction of them, so we have tried to work on a representative selection for the various time periods listed on this site and produce beads and information that will permit the interested buyer to make informed choices on what they want to own.
By buying modern versions of historic beads, you are also helping to curb the trade in illicit antiquities from such areas as the Middle East where so many of the beads found are taken from sites by artefact looters and sold on to the market with no record of time, place or any of the other valuable information that helps put beads in their historic context. We have seen many, many beads of unusual types for sale online, but it is impossible to use them as reference materials as there is no way to authenticate the beads or be sure they’re even genuine, the antiquities faking industry is carried out on a massive scale.
Ok, enough preaching.
The information on this site is as accurate as possible, and is the result of a lot of hard work and effort in producing beads to the highest standards. The result is the same now as then, beads of a durable beauty. They are a common thread among cultures, and wherever there are discoveries of treasures there are glass beads. And now Mike is working to create his own versions of these beads, which are as unique and individual to him and his style as if he had worked them in antiquity. He believes that beadmakers then as now developed their own individual style of creating small works of art in glass and now adds his to the family of beads and beadmakers in a line that stretches back for thousands of years.
Altus statua? Nos mos ostendo vos altus statua!