African Beads: Discovering
The Art Craft Of Beadwork

Let's talk about African beads, those little decorative objects that attract so much attention to those who wear them, not to mention the artists who craft them and the shopkeepers who sell them.

The ancient Egyptians created glass beads, but it was the Italian sea-merchants who transported beads to Africa in the 1500s.

Now, many Africans use glass and plastic beads to design necklaces, headbands, and lots more pieces of clothing and jewelry.

African Bead Background

The Maasai tribal women of Kenya sport colorful beaded headbands, earrings, bracelets, and necklaces. The Dinka people of the Sudan construct elaborate beaded outfits that snugly hug their bodies. In Nigeria, the Yoruba people make hats, fans, and boots adorned with beads to be worn by their king.

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In southeast Africa, Ndebele women stitch African beads onto goatskin to make decorative aprons. The design of these aprons varies according to the wearer's age. When a girl matures, she has a large apron as well as arm and ankle bracelets that she's created.

When she marries, she then wears a bridal apron that's partly made by her mother-in-law. After the birth of her first child, she then is allowed to wear a married woman's apron. Ndebele bridal aprons include a fringe patterned with broad strips; this represents the cattle that the bridegroom's family has paid for his bride.

In Other Communities...

In Zulu love necklaces, (Southern Africa), the colors of African beads used each have a special meaning; but these meanings can vary. Red represents love, anger, or pain, white means purity or truth, and black stands for disappointment.

Blue can be faithfulness, the sea, or gossip, but it can be used to ask for something. Green is grass or loneliness, and yellow is home and wealth. Yellow also represents cow dung and may be used as an insult.

Maasai women (Kenya, Tanzania) wear necklaces, bracelets, earrings and even hats made from strings of glass and plastic beads. Beaded necklaces can be very heavy, but a multitude of strands signify a woman's high status.

In many African cultures, clothing and jewelry are used to show different facets of the wearer's status. This also occurs in modern Western culture, where wedding dresses traditionally signify a woman's transition into marriage, and wedding rings convey marital status.

Truly African fashion, African symbols, African craft and even African quilts combine to create culturally significant expressions of the African's view of his world and author Jane Bingham is to be credited with helping us explore and discover that world!

• Bingham, Jane (2005). African Art & Culture (World Art & Culture), Illustrated Edition. Heinemann/Raintree. ISBN 1844210448.

I'm so grateful to Jane Bingham for inspiring me to create this page on the beads of Africa.

Got a bead on African art? Click the "Art For Sale" button on the menu to the left and browse my catalog of art. You just might be surprised to find some beads there!

Return to the African craft page from
this African beads page.