Beadwork - A World Guide Caroline Crabtree and Pam Stallebrass ISBN 0-8478-2513-2
I recently bought this upon the recommendation of one of the group members, who said it might help me get an overview of beading as a part of world culture. I got the book on Saturday, and finished it yesterday. considering the size of this tome, the speed with which I read the book is an indication of just how fascinating and engaging this book was.
The book is arranged geographically, beginning with Africa and working around the world. The last section of the book discusses various beadwork techniques. I wish I had read this section before reading the rest of the book - the authors referred to "one drop netting" all over the book, and for the life of me, I couldn't see any difference between that and Peyote stitch. Turns out that they're the same thing (duh). The authors feel that the term Peyote stitch should be reserved for a particular style of tubular gourd stitch worked in units of three. (I'm not familiar with the "units of three" technique, though it sure looks like regular tubular Peyote to me) The writing style appears to be British, although the spelling in my copy is Americanized.
That complaint aside, I found the book to be a a festival of eye candy. There are hundreds of photos of beadwork in every possible genre. Some of the photos show people in context of theit beadwork, and others are of items both old and new. There are some fascinating sections about beadwork in antiquity, as well as some neat items on how beads have travelled the globe. For the truly juvenile among us, there are many, many National Geographic type photos of bare breasted women. (You can tell that I'm bead obsessed when I had totally figured out what technique was on the beadwork before noticing the women were topless)
The African and Native American sections were the most detailed and largest sections, so if you're looking for something that doesn't consider these continents to be one homogenized culture. The examples shown really emphasize all the different peoples and their own individual styles of beadwork. The book also talks a lot about materials, and how beads transitioned from indigenous items to an almost universal use of glass beads. One neat photo was of an African piece that used discarded pull tabs in place of more tradtional coins as embellishment.
There are no project instructions, and unless you're darned good at figuring out thread paths from a photo of the finished product, you won't be making a lot of items in the book. However, the book gives a wonderful overview of beadwork as a lot more than mere ornamentation, and as such, is highly recommended, especially if you want to learn more about beadwork as an expression of culture, not just little bits of glass with holes in it.
One warning: this is an expensive book, with a cover price of US$50. I got it for a lot less than that, but this is a book you might want to borrow from the library before pating with a bunch of cash.
Your intrepid reporter,
Kathy N-V