Beads, a variety of personal ornament, made of glass, pottery, metal, bone, ivory, wood, jet, amber, coral, &c., and perforated so that they can be strung on threads and made into necklaces, bracelets, rosaries, &c., or worked on cloth as a kind of embroidery. Their use is of great antiquity, for they are found in the most ancient of the Egyptian tombs as decorations of the dead; and beads supposed to have been used in barter by the Phoenicians in trading with various nations in Africa are still found in considerable numbers, and are highly valued by the natives under the name of 'Aggy' beads. The origin of the name is unknown; but the coloured or variegated glass beads denoted by it are unquestionably of ancient manufacture; they are sometimes sold for more than their weight in gold. Ever since the 14th century, the manufacture of glass beads has been chiefly engrossed by the Venetians, and the glass manufacturers of Murano retain in large measure their ancient monopoly. Birmingham is the chief seat of the manufacture in England. The manufacture is curious: the melted glass, coloured or uncoloured, is taken from the pot by two workmen, who slightly expand the gathering of glass on the end of their blowing tubes. Each man then opens the hollow bulb of glass attached to his tube, and the two bulbs, while still soft and highly heated, are joined into one. This done, they walk rapidly away from each other in opposite directions, in a long shed like a small rope-walk, and draw the glass, which retains its tubular character given by the blowing, &c., into rods of great length, and often extremely small diameter. On cooling, which takes place very quickly, these long rods are broken up into short lengths of about a foot, and a small number of these shorter rods are placed on a sharp cutting edge, after being annealed, and are chopped into lengths. The roughly cut beads are next placed in an iron drum containing a mixture of plaster and charcoal dust. The drum is placed in or over a furnace, and a rotatory movement given to it. By this operation the short bits of tubes or perforated canes, which are softened by the heat, become rounded. The plaster and charcoal prevent the beads sticking together while soft. The beauty and infinite variety of Venetian glass beads are quite wonderful. They are sent to almost all parts of the world, but especially to African ports for the purposes of barter in the interior.
In Old English, bede signified 'a prayer,' and hence came to mean the small perforated balls of gold, silver, glass, ivory, or hard-wood, used for keeping account of the number of prayers repeated. This curious transfer of the name from what is counted—the prayers—to that which is used to count them, finds its exact parallel in Spanish, where cuenta, 'a bead,' is from contar, 'to count.' The old phrase 'to bid one's beads' means simply 'to say one's prayers;' and the modern phrase 'to tell one's beads,' literally 'to number one's prayers,' now means simply 'to say one's prayers.' A certain number of such beads strung on a thread makes a Rosary (q.v.). A bedesman or bedeswoman is one who prays for another. Persons of station and wealth in old times 'had regularly appointed bedesmen, who were paid to weary Heaven with their supplications.' Bedesmen frequently lived together in hospitals, and joined in prayers for their founders and benefactors, and hence bedchouse is synonymous with an almshouse. The King's Bedesmen in Scotland were licensed mendicants (see BLUE-GOWNS). A common form of signature at one time was: 'Your bounden bedesman,' or 'Your humble bedeswoman,' instead of the modern 'Your obedient servant.'