Posted 8 years ago
Zilla
(8 items)
Hello,
I recently got this glass necklace in a bulk lot of old jewellery. It has a tag on it that says "Peking". I don't know much about Peking Glass so I tried to do some research. I also noticed some of the diamond shaped beads have a green tinge, so I shone a UV black light on them. One round bead that looks the same as the others glows very brightly yellow. There is a very faint glow to the diamond beads.
So I am interested, is this a uranium glass necklace even though the beads are not green? Why is one round bead so much brighter than the others? where is it most likely to have originated from?
Hope someone can help ????
Just added a photo of the clasp. Actually I think it's been restrung.
Thanks for your help
Uranium in glass was very common before WWII, and like Valentino says it's only recently people have got super excited about it.
The beads don't look very Asian to me, but it is a great necklace!
Thanks for your help racer4four. I don't think the "Peking" tag seems to be accurate either. Maybe it was just a popularly misused term. I thought they would add uranium to make the glass green, is there some combination that would make it this garnet red type of colour, or was it just put in just about everything with nothing to do with colour?
It was used to make yellows and greens , but also in some cases a very small percentage of salts was used in clear glass. It would have had nothing to do with the colouring of the red beads, possibly if they fluoresce at all it's because their base metal (glass) had some uranium in it prior to additives to make the red.
my fingers are itching to re-use these beads... but that would spoil the piece
Haha lentilka11
Thanks Valentino- very helpful.
Thanks everyone for your help. Very very appreciated. I'm marking this one as solved.
I suggest taking a closer look at the beads. Your necklace could be made with authentic handmade Peking /Canton glass beads if: 1. holes are large enough to let a silk cord through (right now brass spacer cover them so it's hard to tell), and 2. since you plan to restring the necklace, take a close look inside the bead hole; look for small clay particles embedded in the glass (many Chinese beads were produced by "winding" melted glass onto a clay-covered rod). If that's not the case, the beads could be older Czech copies or most likely, new craft beads.
Thanks for the help davyd286
I really appreciate you sharing your knowledge. It's so helpful!
Thanks for the loves:
valentino97
racer4four
TassieDevil
Efesgirl
lentilka11
Manikin
aura
pebble
bijoucaillouvintage