Copper Colorful Zircon Openwork Barrel Bead

Coloured stones in a row are at their worst when they turn into a jumble. This barrel bead keeps the colour inside a few small windows: one red, one blue, one green, with copper between them, so it cannot go wrong. The form is a barrel, the waist slightly swollen, both ends flattened, and a plain ring at each end frames the coloured section. The windows are long ovals with rounded edges, nothing sharp to the touch. The copper ground sits beneath the stones rather than around them, which makes the colour read denser than it would on its own. The copper bars left between the windows are not narrow, and they hold the stones securely.

The barrel is one of the oldest main-bead forms in a string; Tibetan rosaries often use it, flat at both ends, strung tight, and it does not rotate. A swollen waist gives a little more variation than a straight barrel, and the hand finds the narrow part when the string is rolled. On old beads the bulge polishes brightest with handling while the ends stay darker, and this one has that relationship of light and dark built in from new.

Coloured zircon in a row is all about sequence. Put the same family of colour side by side and it smears into one tone; separate them and a rhythm appears. The colours here are already arranged, red, blue and green in turn, so from a distance they read as bands and close up each stone has its own seat. The red is the loudest of the three and sits at the centre, a little above it, so the eye lands there first; the other two support it.

For colour, this bead works best inside a dark section, as a break. Ebony and coconut shell give a deep ground, and coloured zircon lights up against them, rather sharply, so leave a plain bead on either side to soften the transition. In a string of pale bodhi it goes quiet instead: red and blue and green against off-white read as an accent rather than a lead. The windows are few and narrow, and what shows through them is the cord itself, not empty space.

The openwork lightens the barrel, which also makes it unsuitable for carrying load. Better placed in the middle of a string as an accent, with solid beads on both sides so the cord is not rubbing back and forth over the window edges. Coloured zircon dislikes heat, so keep it off a radiator and away from a hairdryer. When dust gathers in the seams, brush along the windows with a soft brush; do not push a toothpick in, which is a quick way to loosen a setting.