Beaded Jewellery is one of those jewellery fashions which come and go over the centuries. But most importantly it is here and the fashion right now in Australia.  You only have to look at television newsreaders and talk show hostesses to see that beads are in!  At the top of this fashion are big beads.

Throughout history beads have been popular with lower classes of the populations because they are cheap and can be made by things you can collect yourself and you can make a lovely necklace yourself with hardly any tools or skill.

Periodically throughout history in Egypt, Russia and other places in Europe and Asia the rulers have banned all but royalty from wearing gemstones and the entire population outside of them started to wear beads made from shell and other non gemstone material.

Today it is not just women but men too are wearing bulky looking necklaces with same masculine looking beads.  It is that beach, primitive kind of look that is catching on with the men. 

The best part is that everyone can afford them.  You can make them yourself for fun and to suit your own style or you can by them almost with small change.  The other day I bought a bracelet made from a natural shell with probably a hundred pieces strung strongly together on an expanding string so that one size fits all.  If I had made this I guess it would have taken me an hour.  I bought it in Sydney’s CBD in a gem shop for four dollars!

Since man has been chasing women in and out of caves there is evidence that the women were wearing beads to get them more interested, or perhaps the men made them strings of beads to entice them into the cave.  We don’t know which way that went but we are sure that someone was making beads and someone was wearing beads as beaded jewellery tens of thousands of years ago.