Ming Tea 22″ Necklace and 7 1/2″ braclet take on an ancient age using two imported 900 year old Ming pottery shards delicately framed as the focal beads. I also make 2,000 year old coin jewelry, so found it a treat to find out about the ancient Chinese Ming pottery shards from a artisan friend, and run down a Chinese supplier.
Finding matching colored pastel beads was a stoke of luck as well, and the whole graduated set of beads fell together nicely.
I selected stainless coated cord to slide through the graduated Coral & jade beads. The plastic coated stainless cord resists corrosion from body oils.
The 3mm and 15mm silver beads and S-Hooks are German silver, and I accented the pieces with Chinese carved jade tea leaves. The jade is called “new” jade and has a pastel color to it. The red coral and green chinese jade pastel beads match fairly close with the pottery shard paintings.
The tea leaves were strung on the stainless cord and made up seperately with my smallest round coral and jade beads, and then secured with crimp beads. If you haven’t bought crimper pliers you should. It makes crimping a breeze and I was able, for instance to squeeze the silver crimps down so that they slide out of veiw inside the 15mm beads.
