Potlatch Ready, Let’s Go! Trade Beads and Handcarved Salmon Earrings
“Potlatch Ready, Let’s Go!” Trade Beads with Handcarved Sterling Earrings was an inspired piece for me to create here at Walker Goldsmiths. The traditional Hudson’s Bay White Hearts with their cheerful red glass layer over white glass, together with the Venetian Fancy Spotted Cranberries are party perfect. I teamed them up with Black Onyx and a Venetian Black hand faceted center bead. The bone white spacers are there not only as color relief but to protect the beads from each other. Owen carved the Sterling Salish Salmon that go so well with the red beads, kind of a hint of Salmon Eggs.
These could also be titled “Rendezvous Ready” because these Hudson’s Bay White Hearts were the beads traded by the Fur Traders to the native fur trappers. Check out this article about these beads. All of the red beads in this piece are Cornaline d’Allepo, a name given to red glass beads by glass bead makers who were making these colored beads to compete with the Carnelian bead makers, thus Carnelian/Cornaline from/d’ the area of Allepo, Syria. I love the names that travel with the Trade Beads as they often tell the wonderful stories of origin.
Owen was getting ready to make a trip to Alert Bay, BC, Canada for a Potlatch with the Kwakwakawak people and I was staying home to hold down the fort, but my heart was going along with him and caused me to create this necklace, Potlatch Ready, Let’s Go! Trade Beads with Handcarved Sterling Earrings.
