Modern Krobo Powder Glass Beads by Evelyn Simak.
 
The origins of beadmaking in Ghana are unknown.  Krobo bead making has been documented from the 1920s, but despite limited archaeological evidence it is believed that Ghanaian powder glass bead making dates further back.  Beads still play important roles in present-day Krobo society, be it in rituals of birth, coming of age, marriage, or death.  
 
Powder glass beads are made from finely ground glass, the main source being broken and unusable bottles and a great variety of other scrap glasses. Special glasses such as old cobalt medicine bottles, cold cream jars, and many other types of glasses from plates, ashtrays, window panes - to name only a few - are occasionally bought new, just for the purpose. Pulverized or merely fragmented, and made into beads, these glasses yield particularly bright colours and glossy surfaces. Modern ceramic colorants, finely ground broken beads, or shards of different colored glasses from various sources are added to create a great variety of styles, designs and decorative patterns in many different colors. In addition, glass bead fragments of varying sizes, which have traditionally been used for the manufacture as well as for the decoration of specific types of beads, can now be found in interesting new combinations, and during the past few years in particular, bead makers have taken their tradition yet another step forward by using entire, i.e. whole small beads for making their colorful creations.
 
Krobo powder glass beads are made in vertical molds, which are fashioned out of a locally dug clay. Most molds have a number of depressions, designed to hold one bead each, and each of these depressions, in turn, has a small central depression to hold the stem of a cassava leaf. The mold is filled with finely ground glass that can be built up in layers in order to form sequences and patterns of different shapes and colours. The technique is similar to creating a "sand painting" or to filling a bottle with different-colored sands, and it is called the "vertical-mold dry powder glass technique". When cassava leaf stems are used, these will burn away during firing and leave the bead perforation. Certain powder glass bead variants, however, receive their perforations after firing, by piercing the still hot and soft glass with a hand-made, pointed metal tool. Firing takes place in clay kilns and can take several hours.
 
There are three distinct styles of modern Krobo powder glass beads: 
 
1) Fused glass fragment beads which are being made by fusing together fairly large bottle glass or glass bead fragments.  This style is called "Gige". The beads are translucent or semi-translucent, and they receive their perforations, as well as their final shapes, after firing. 

 
2) Beads comprised of two halves (usually bicones but occasionally also spheres) are called "Ologo". The halves are being made separately and joined together in a second, short firing process. 

 
3) The "Mue ne Angma" or "Writing Beads" are conventional powder glass beads made from finely ground glasses.  Their decorative patterns are created with glass slurry that is "written" onto the beads' surface with pointed sticks

For great examples of Krobo powderglass please visit our eBay store at Africa Direct.

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