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Kiffa beads are rare powder glass beads named after the Mauritanian city of Kiffa, where French ethnologist R.Mauny documented them first in 1949. Kiffa beads represent one of the highest levels of artistic skill and ingenuity in beadmaking, being manufactured with the simplest materials and tools available - pulverized European glass beads or fragments of them, bottle glass, pottery shards, tin cans, twigs, steel needles, some gum arabic, and open fires. The term Kiffa bead, named after one of the old bead making centres of Kiffa in Mauritania, was coined by United States bead collectors during the 1980s. According to Peter Francis, Jr., the making of powder glass beads in West Africa may date back a few hundred years, and to possibly 1200 CE in Mauritania. Maure powder glass beads are believed to copy older, Islamic beads, of the type made in Fustat and elsewhere. Although the making of Mauritanian powder glass beads appears to be an ancient tradition, no archaeological evidence to establish their age has been found to date. ==Production== Glass which is finely crushed to a powder is mixed with a binder such as saliva or gum arabic diluted in water. Decorations are made from the glass slurry i.e. crushed glass mixed with a binder and applied with a pointed tool, usually a steel needle. The beads are placed in small containers, often sardine cans and heated to fuse the glass on open fires without moulds. Kiffa beads were made in various shapes: blue, red, and polychromatic triangles with yellow, black, white, red and blue chevron-type and decorations that resemble eyes; blue, red and polychromatic diamond-shaped beads; cigar shaped and conical beads as well as a variety of small spherical and oblate beads. Colour sequences observed on traditional beads with polychromatic decorations are always the same, i.e. red-yellow-black (dark brown)-yellow-red-white-blue-white. Often the obverse is decorated as well, and it is believed that different bead making families had their own distinct styles. For their wearers, all these beads held amuletic properties. The colours, shapes and the many different intricate decorative patterns all having specific meanings, most of them forgotten today. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Kiffa beads」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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