When I was a little girl, my parents took me and my five siblings to the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We left with tents and camping gear the weekend after school ended in June. We went every summer for two weeks. Most summers we camped at a large campground in Salvo, NC. There was a long boardwalk to the beach from the campground. All six of us raced to the beach in the mornings and drug our way back at the end of each day. We were exhausted from riding waves and playing in the sun. I always stumped a big toe on the boardwalk coming back to the campsite, making the hike seem that much longer. But never did that stop me from racing right back to the beach the next morning.

There were several special outings each summer. One special trip was eating out at Kentucky Fried Chicken. As you can imagine, my parents didn’t take us out to eat very often, so this felt rather fancy as a child. As we road along the winding coastline, we all watched for the red roof. Whoever spotted it first shouted so we all knew we were close!

Another outing was going to Nags Head to visit the Wright Brother’s museum and then stop to climb the giant sand dunes. The sand dunes were a special treat. I am sure my parents loved that day because we played up and down the dunes for so long that we wore ourselves out. We all fell asleep on the ride back to Salvo, giving my mom and dad a quiet break.

My most favorite trip each summer was the trip to Ocracoke Island. This was also our day to shop at cool little places. Every year my parents gave us each $2.00 for allowance for the two-week trip. No more, no less, and once it was spent, that was it. Riding the ferry over to the island was so exciting to me, anticipating what treasure I may find to buy.

I remember my first trip to Ocracoke as a very young child. The only ferry I had heard of at the time was the Tooth Fairy. I watched everything while we waited in a long line of cars. All I could see was water and people. Finally, a beautiful woman walked by. She wore a blue chiffon scarf around her head that was blowing in the breeze. “That must be her…she must be the fairy we are waiting on!” I grabbed my moms’ arm and pointed, “Look, mom, is that the fairy?” After she stopped laughing, she explained what a ferry boat was…that we could drive our car onto it and drive off the other side of the boat onto the island. While I was sad not to meet the beautiful woman in the blue chiffon scarf, the boat ride was something to look forward to.

One summer, when I was about 6 years old, I spent all my money on a cloth doll named Mary Buxton. A lady from Buxton, NC made her, and I thought the doll was so special. I loved her small floral print fabric and her embroidered face and hair. Her bonnet and dress also had red lace around the edges. What a pretty doll! She is stained and faded now, but I still have her and she sits on a shelf in my jewelry studio.

The next summer I spent all my money on beads (you may see a spending pattern developing here!). I bought several of them, two of which I still have today. They were pottery beads with colorful patterns, which I thought were the coolest designs I’d ever seen. These beads are now joined with a string of beads that are the fan chain pull in my studio.

Mary Buxton and my beads may have taken up all my allowance those two summers, but I kept them all these years. They were the beginning of my interest in patterns, designs, and art. My love of beads escalated from that day forward. Through the years I began collecting beads, initially just for their pretty colors. I would string them and hang my own jewelry pendants on them. My mom was always first in line to get me to string beads to match a pendant she bought somewhere.

One day, many years later, I went into a shop in downtown Greensboro, NC called Lost and Found. Sadly, it closed several years ago, but my first visit launched me into an education of the history of beads throughout the world. I spent hours in the store each visit and the shop owner would give me the history and origin of every bead I looked at. Soon my bead collecting became very focused. I began collecting old antique glass beads. Beads provided insight into different cultures during different times. Depending on the culture, beads may have been traded for supplies and necessities, serving as the currency of that culture. In another culture, beads represented social status. Yet in another culture beads were used in religious or spiritual ceremonies, or were simply decorative in jewelry, furniture, and art as we most often see them used today.

My bead stringing began to reflect colorful old glass beads and my interest in collecting beads increased. I bought Millefiori Beads, meaning “thousands of flowers”, which are colorful and full of intricate detail. One trip to Santa Fe, NM, I found a bead shop that had the most beautiful selection of Chevron Beads I had seen. These beads are most often red, white, and blue layers of glass. I bought several beads for my mom. She loved jewelry and of course, loved old glass beads, too. I made her a Chevron necklace for Christmas that year after our visit to Santa Fe. Mom had quite the eye for interesting jewelry. One year she gave me an Ethiopian Cross. I love these Coptic crosses as they are often quite primitive and remind me of folk art. The old glass beads I had collected proved the perfect complement for my cross and the one mom had bought for herself!

Over the years I collected quite a few old glass beads. When I say old beads, I mean 200-400 years old. One day when I visited Lost and Found, the shop owner suggested a book that my husband, Bo, gave me for Christmas that year. It was The History of Beads…from 30,000 B.C. to the Present, by Lois Sherr Dubin. What a fascinating book! After reading this book I realized that I don’t really have any old beads!

These experiences, as well as jewelry making and cutting rocks and stones, have provided me with a depth of knowledge and an awareness that everything has a story. There is always more than meets the eye. Beads are not only an integral part of history, but someone made every single one of them. Jewelry designs don’t just happen but are influenced and informed by something or someone. Rocks and stones are dug from the earth or formed by the rivers, some only found in specific parts of the world. It is very fascinating to me. I don’t look at anything now without exploring or wondering about its story. I’m sure there is more to my Mary Buxton doll and those first few beads I bought than I’ll ever know.

Thanks for stopping by!

Bibba