A special kind of beads, Ghana culture

Beads are culturally, historically and archaeologically important in Ghana. Beads can be made of many materials, but stone and glass beads are particularly immune to destruction and thus survive very well in the archaeological record. The bead collection of the museum is made up primarily of glass beads. These glass beads come from three main sources: glass beads traded over the Sahara, from Egypt and other middle Eastern and Islamic sources; glass beads traded over the sea, from Europe, particularly Venice in Italy, Bohemia, and Holland; and glass beads made in West Africa, mostly in Ghana.

The popularity of glass and stone beads as a trading item may also be attributed to their imperviousness to temperature, humidity and insect predation. Beads have been used and traded all over the world, for many hundreds of years. As Sleen so elegantly says, ‘The bowdrill is nearly as old as civilisation and ornamental stones like agate could be pierced and strung before the pyramids were built’ (Sleen 1967:17). In Cambay, India, people have been making carnelian stone beads for the last 7,000 years (Sleen 1967:18). West Africans were thus not alone in their love of beads, but Ghanaian ethnic groups differed from others in two important ways. First, beads here were valued in their own right, and not merely for the patterns they could create en masse. In contrast to bead use by the North American Indians, the southern Africans and even the Yoruba (Dubin 1987: 266ff, 133ff, 138ff), Ghanaian ethnic groups did not use many small beads to create patterns.

Beads in Ghana were and still are prized for their individuality, and beads have specific names and meanings. Second, there has been a flourishing, local, glass bead making industry for many years. The origins of this industry are debated, because it is unclear what the source of glass was prior to the large quantifies of glass beads that were imported through the European trade. It is clear, however, that certain types of imported beads were in demand because they could be re used as components in local glass bead making, rather than for immediate use. The Bohemian, small, single colour beads were particularly important raw materials for local beadmakers.

Ghanaian bead makers do not work with molten glass, but work with powdered or fragmented glass, which they place in moulds and then heat in a kiln. Almost everywhere else in the world glass beads are made by blowing, or winding, or drawing out, or mould pressing hot red molten glass. The only other place they work with glass powder is in Mffa, Mauritania, and here the colours and shapes are very constrained, and the industry is nowhere near as vital as it is in Ghana. There have been changes in the bead making industry in Ghana, however. The two main centres for glass bead making today are in the Krobo and the Ashanti traditional areas. ¬But in the 1930s, one British anthropologist reported on glass bead making near the C6te d’Ivoire border (Chapter 7); a second anthropologist reported on the techniques used in glass bead making in the Ashanti traditional area and they differ from those used today. In this book we concentrate on bead making in the Krobo area, but we hope to expand our coverage in the next edition to include the Ashanti bead makers.

The first question, then, is, what do people do with beads in Ghana? In an attempt to answer this question we interviewed two sorts of bead wearers: Krobo queen mothers and Krobo traditional priests. Why this emphasis on the Krobo traditional area? We chose to concentrate on the Krobo traditional area partly because of the number of bead producers in Krobo, and partly because the Dipo custom of the Krobo is one of the most well known bead wearing occasions of any ethnic group in Ghana. Many other ethnic groups have similar customs, and many other ethnic groups wear beads, and have their own names and meanings for the beads, and we hope to cover these in subsequent editions.

The second question is, how did the beads get to Ghana? To address this question we interviewed bead traders and importers. Traders travel all over West Africa buying and selling beads, old and new, and are the modern day equivalents of the trans Saharan traders of former times. Bead importers and wholesalers on the other hand deal primarily in European beads. They lived and worked in the cities, awaiting shipments from Europe. This business flourished in colonial times, but suffered after independence.

The third question is, how are beads made in Ghana? We interviewed some of the Krobo bead makers, including the acting queen mother of the Osu Panya division of the Manya Krobo, who are the first bead makers in the Krobo traditional area.

West African trade in glass beads falls into distinct historical categories, with Islamic bead production and trade, after A.D.800 The Islamic faith originated in Arabia in the seventh century and spread to Africa, Asia, south east Europe and China. The Islamic promotes a strong sense of brotherhood and so craftsmen were able so move freely through Islam’s many countries: local crafts from many tries were imbued with Islamic motifs.

Glassmaking centres were lished in Egypt, Syria and the Levant (Lebanon). Between A.D. 900 and ao. Cairo became an important centre for bead makers who imported and traded coral, pearls, cowry shells and African ivory. Glass beads appeared in West Africa from the eighth century onwards, so Arab merchants crossed the Sahara with beads from Cairo and India. The Arabs dominated long distance trade in the region, trading glass beads, salt and copper ornaments for gold, ivory and slaves.

The lucrative monopoly the Arabs had on the West African trade ended with the arrival of the European trading ships on the coast of West Africa an the late 1400s. The Portuguese were the first to arrive, followed by the Danes, Dutch, French, Belgians and Germans. Explorers, discoverers and settlers brought glass beads with them, first as presents and as items for barter. Beads were used as payment for gold, ivory, slaves, wd salt. The beads traded were nearly all Venetian beads, including chevrons, and most are indistinguishable from the ones found in African archaeological sites dating from the same period. The early venetian beads were soon copied by other Europeans, notably the Dutch and the Eastern European artisans.

The importance of the bead trade to Europeans in the early centuries lay not in the numbers of beads traded per se, but in the equality of the exchange which made the bead trade so profitable Tmellato 1998: 65 71). And this was true throughout the inhabited world: *In an emblematic act when conquering Mexico City in 1519, Cortez is told w, have offered Montezuma a necklace made of small Venetian glass beads “A present in return for the red shell necklace with eighteen golden scarabs he had received from the Aztec king’. (Gasparetto 1958:185 quou in Trivellato 1998:65). The inequality of exchange was well understood; in a French commercial guide published in the 1720s, the author lists thirty seven types of glass beads favored by the Senegalese, and most useful in the slave trade, and goes on to inform readers that in Angola, they could exchange 3,000 French pounds of seed beads for 612 male slaves, provided 6 selected the beads carefully (Trivellato 1998:65,70).

The quantity of beads sold into West Africa between the sixteenth eighteenth centuries remained low partly because the use of imported beads in West Africa was controlled by the chiefs through sumptuary In and other means Uargstoff 1995:104f~.

Sumptuary laws dictated what sorts of beads and what sorts of cloth people could wear, according rank. For example, in the old kingdom of Benin (now in Nigeria), color beads were highly prized and controlled. The number of coral beads by an official indicated his rank, and those who wore such beads with” conferred privilege would be executed. Seventeenth century records tell of the ‘coral feast’ where the Oba, or king, would ride through old Ben and personally confer upon his officials the ‘honour of beads’. Uargsta 1995:109)

But by the nineteenth century, many of the use restrictions vanished, the colonial governments wrested power from the chiefs and emphasis commerce, seeking markets for their goods. The production of beads became more industrialized, producing more variety for less cost and East and West Africa were flooded with Venetian, Bohemian, and Dutch glass beads. Dealers from all over Europe were involved.

Between 1827 and 1841 the Gold Coast (present day southern Ghana) imported phenomenal average of 74,952 pounds (34 metric tons) of glass beads P year. Exactly what happened to most of these beads is unclear. The bead trade was also substantial in money terms. For example, in 1846 the value of glass beads represented 15.7 per cent of all the imports to the Gold Coast (Francis 1993:8).

Most, if not all, of the glass beads made in Ghana today are produced either by the Asante people, in villages just south and west of Kumasi, or by the Krobo people, in villages in the Akuapem hills and in the coastal Plains east of Accra.

The heart of a bead factory is a kiln, that is built from clay, earth and sometimes old car parts for rigidity, and looks similar to a clay pizza or bread oven. Glass pieces are placed in moulds and put into the kiln, which have sufficient heat to fuse or sinter the glass in the mould, but not to melt it completely. The size of a factory is denoted by the number of kilns and by the number of master craftsmen. The kilns are outside under shade structures of varying sophistication. The factory then, is not a building, but a series of work areas under shade trees and structures. Beads in Ghana are produced by recycling glass. Not all the glass used is old and broken: many small, single colored beads from Bohemia in the Czech Republic are bought by bead makers in Ghana to use as raw material in making new beads, for colors unavailable through other means. Nowadays ceramic dyes are available, and these are mixed with clear powdered glass to produce a wider range of colored beads, though these are not translucent.

While some bead factories are quite large, with a number of kilns and a lot of workers, (for example Florence Martey, who employs ten people), others have only a single kiln. In the past, most bead manufacturing took place in the foothill villages, but some of these producers have moved to the towns at the bottom of the foothills.

This is probably owing to the better roads in towns, and proximity to Accra, providing easier transport for their goods, a good market at Agomanya, and better access for traders u ho wish to come and buy. But there are many producers still in Upper Nlanya.

Francis (1993) suggested there were as many as eleven Asante villages making beads, with the village of Dabaa acknowledged as the earliest bead¬making village. Asante beads, while made by similar methods, look distinct from Krobo beads.

After production the beads are polished and threaded and sold either in strings or in pairs of bracelets. There are two main bead markets for the Krobo bead sellers: the Thursday market in Koforidua, and the Wednesday and Saturday market in Agomanya. In the early part of the twentieth century the market at Asesewa was also very large, and described as one of the largest markets in West Africa (Field 1943), but with the introduction of vehicles, and the lack of roads in Upper Manya, it has lost its prominence. In the market in Agomanya, there are approximately sixty ¬stalls of bead sellers, and the new buyer is frequently at a loss as to whom to buy from, since many sell similar if not identical beads. The similarities come because some of the bigger bead factories sell their beads to others to sell, and so a number of stalls may be selling beads from the same manufacturer, but bead makers also use the market to get ideas from their competitors. For example, Florence Martey comments, ‘Sometimes when I design a new bead, I take it to the market and sell it for a good price. Then somebody will see it and make the same bead. On the next market day he will sell it for a reduced price. I wish something could be done to stop this. Some bead makers will not display a new bead in the market, but will show it only to known buyers, so that the design will not be copied so readily. Frequent buyers establish relationships with one or two sellers, and if those sellers do not have what they want, the sellers help them find it.

The busiest time of year for the bead producers and sellers is the celebration of the Dipo custom, though all festivals increase the demand for beads, as do large funerals. The stories of these bead producers suggest it is possible to make a good living from bead production, but it is not easy work.

The term “Trade Beads” typically applies to beads made predominately in Venice and Bohemia and other European countries from the late 1400s through to the early 1900s and traded in Africa and the Americas. Many of these beads have been attributed to being made in Germany, France and the Netherlands as well.

The heyday of this “trade” period was from the mid 1800s through the early 1900s when millions of these beads were produced and traded in Africa. The Venetians dominated this market and produced the majority of the beads sold during this time. The J.F. Sick and Co, based in Germany and Holland was one of the largest bead brokers/importers during this period. Moses Lewin Levin was a bead importer/exporter who operated out of London from 1830 to 1913. You can see 4 of the Levin trade bead sample cards from 1865 in The History of Beads (Dubin).

The popularity of these beads was revived in the late 1960s when they began to be exported from Africa into the United States and Europe. The term “Trade Beads” became very popular during this time period and is still used for the same bead reference today. The millefiori beads were also called “Love Beads” and used in necklaces with peace symbols during the Hippie days.

As the popularity and availability of these old beads grew they started getting “named”. We started hearing terms like “Russian Blues”, “Dutch Donuts”, “King Beads”. Although some of these folklore names are totally meaningless…ie….”Lewis and Clarke” beads, they do describe a specific type of bead.

And today these beads are more popular and collectable than ever. Thousands of these beads are in private collections around the world. The African Traders are having to go deeper and deeper into Africa to find more of these beads and many styles which were readily available just 5 years ago are no longer seen today.