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Long beaded necklace of red-and-clear glass beads (reassembled)
Jewelry
A long single-strand necklace of round translucent glass beads in a red, white, and colourless palette, shown coiled. Each bead is clear/colourless with internal swirls and patches of red and milky white, formed by setting coloured and opaque glass within a clear matrix, so that the strand reads as a mottled coral-red and clear glass rope. The beads are fairly uniform in size and strung continuously to a substantial length, allowing the necklace to be looped multiple times. The piece has been reassembled (restrung) at some point, and in the process an original brooch or ornamental element that formed part of the necklace was lost; the present strand therefore represents the beads in a modified, incomplete state relative to their original configuration. No clasp or surviving decorative fitting is visible. The glass beads appear sound, with the glassy surface intact.
2025.1.101
Necklace
Belonged to Gertrudis Caraballo Gálvez. Restrung by María A. Cabrera Arús.
The Cabrera Arús family collection
Gertrudis Caraballo Gálvez collecition
2025.1
Maker Unidentified. No maker's mark or label present or expected on a strung-bead necklace of this type. The beads may be of Czech/Bohemian manufacture (see Place of Origin and Research Notes); attribution tentative. Date Circa mid-20th century (beads; undetermined). The present stringing is later, representing a post-original repair. The bead style is consistent with mid-century costume jewellery, but the reassembly means the strand as it now exists postdates the original object. Place of Origin Possibly Bohemia (Czech lands / former Czechoslovakia); attribution tentative, based on bead style and the historic dominance of Bohemian glass-bead production. Not confirmed by any mark and not securely established from the object alone.
Materials Glass beads (red and white colouration within a colourless matrix), possibly of Czech/Bohemian manufacture; stringing cord/thread from the later reassembly. Original brooch element: lost, not present. Technique Round glass beads with internal colour swirls, formed by incorporating coloured and opaque glass within a clear matrix; strung on cord. Current assembly is a later restringing.
Fair
Gertrudis Caraballo Gálvez
owner
María A. Cabrera Arús
fixer, user
Havana
Cuba
Caribbean
Central America
use
The loss of the original brooch and the restringing of the beads document how jewellery in Cuba was kept in service and adapted over time rather than discarded — a meaningful aspect of the object's history in its own right, even though it complicates dating. The beads may be of Czech (Bohemian) origin, a region historically dominant in glass-bead and glass-jewellery production, with the Jablonec nad Nisou area its historic centre and exports channelled in the socialist period largely through the state enterprise commonly known as Jablonex.