Oh Those Lovely Bones

There’s a novel by Alice Sebold called The Lovely Bones that has recently been made into a feature film. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but I do know just how lovely bone beads are.

Bone is one of the very earliest materials used by humans for ornament. Early peoples worked with stone tools to carve bone into small ornaments and beads. They believed that the spirit of animals continued to have an influence, so bone objects were used for ritual and magic.

The respect and reverence of the hunter for prey was lost with the founding of cities in the Roman era, so the magical aspect of the bones was diminished, but the ornamental function has continued in popularity to the present day.

Most modern bone beads, from cow, sheep, or camel bones, are made by hand in small factories and private homes in Indonesia, India, Africa, and China. After the bone has been thoroughly processed, it is cut in small workable pieces and then carved into shapes, often bearing traditional designs. These beads are still hand carved, so every one is unique. After carving, the beads can be stained or dyed. Although most bone beads are cream-colored, brown, or black, they can be found in every color of the rainbow.

Some beautiful bone beads from Africa are dyed using a process known as batik, similar to the process for creating lovely patterns on fabric. These beads come in various designs, such as star, zebra, striped, traditional, arrow, and many more.

As you can see from a glimpse at these storage boxes from my bead collection, even in this modest grouping, there is a huge variety of different sizes, shapes, and patterns in bone beads.

Here’s a bunch of simple bone spacers that have been dyed in a wide range of colors.

Lots of bone beads have fascinating markings. Let’s look first at a grouping of black beads with white markings.

Now consider the opposite: white bone beads with dark carved patterns.

Various shades of dark brown, brown, or tan are also popular with bone beads.

Carving can be extremely intricate and delicate, displaying floral or geometric patterns, for example.

Bone beads are great for all sorts of ethnic designs in necklaces and earrings. They work well with metal beads, such as brass and copper, and combine easily with beads of other natural materials, such as horn, coconut, wood, and clay. Bone beads go well with neutral colors, but they are also effective with solid primary colors. Here’s an example of a necklace design using a batik bone pendant and beads with some bright red glass trade beads (called “white hearts” for the white core inside the red beads).

Here’s another necklace design with a bone pendant and bone beads, all in caramel brown and “bone” white shades.

For earrings designs, keep in mind that bone beads often have fairly large (and sometimes uneven) holes. So you may want to fill inside the hole so the bead isn’t loose on the headpin wire. I’ve found that Japanese delicas seed beads (11 size) are usually perfect for this purpose.

Here’s an example of an elegant bone bead with very simple carving, just diagonal lines, but which includes the element of interest via different colors for the lines. Bone bead earrings are suitable for dress-up and dress-down outfits. This pair would go equally well with a cream linen suit or a tee and jeans.

Consider mixing materials for fun and design interest. Here’s a pair of earrings with very elaborately carved bone ovals paired with tiny rounds of genuine carnelian stone.

You can mix and match shapes as well. Here a lovely bone round with carved melon lines is combined with cubes of opaque Czech glass.

Sometimes other kinds of materials are incorporated into the bone beads themselves, as in these dark brown bone beads with carved diagonal lines and end caps of Chinese silver enamel.

Bone beads are great for earring designs with long slender tube shapes or simple rounds that are easy-going, casual adornment that’s fun to wear.

Well, I hope you’ve enjoyed seeing some bone beads.

One word of warning, however, is in order: although I don’t detect any odor that distinguishes bone beads from the many glass and stone beads in my boxes, young Angus MacDuff notices the bone beads immediately!