This interesting necklace sold recently at auction, and the vendor kindly granted permission to use their photos in a blog post here. In the past ten years since I started this blog to investigate Chinese cloisonne beads, I’ve only encountered two other instances of this design featuring large flat oval beads, frilly filigree petal caps, and fabric cord - one featuring dragon beads and turquoise-colored stone nuggets, the other a center fragment that had lost its fabric ties (Collector’s Weekly, 2017). A suite of 10 beads similar to those in the necklace fragment appeared on eBay in 2014, but close comparison revealed that they are different from the necklace fragment beads.
The Chinese workshop that produced these flat oval beads
seems to have favored only a few designs: a dragon, plum blossom buds, and chrysanthemums. These designs are worked either with the
enamel background fully filled in or left unfilled with the golden brassy
background exposed in the “golden ground” technique (also called openwork).
These large flat oval beads also appear in other jewelry designs:
another fabric composition featuring metal-covered silk cords; rather barbaric
heavy brass torque-style necklaces and bracelet; a very simple design that
simply hangs three pendants from a heavy brass chain; and elaborate jewelry
featuring gemstones and filigree findings.
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