What Is Beading?

How is beading done?

Beading is done by stitching beads to a base material one at a time or in short strings, either with a sewing needle or with a fine tambour hook. When the beads are sewn on to form a design, the work is a kind of embroidery, and beads can share a design with sequins, as they do in Lunéville work.

Needle beading

The beads are picked up on a threaded needle and stitched down through the cloth. The base can be woven cloth or leather: conservators describe historic beadwork threaded with sinew, cotton or wool and applied to tanned leather or to woven wool or silk.

Tambour (Lunéville) beading

In tambour beading, the fabric is stretched on a frame and worked from the wrong side with a pointed hook. The beads are threaded first, and each chain stitch made on the reverse holds a bead on the right side. The chain is a locking stitch, which grips each bead firmly, and once the hand movements are learned the work goes much faster than needle beading.

Where does beading come from?

Beading has no single origin: many cultures stitch beads to dress, and each tradition has its own history. Two are covered here.

Lunéville and the couture workrooms

Tambour embroidery took root in Lunéville, in Lorraine, France, after embroiderers settled there in the late 18th century. Around 1810 they were chain-stitching designs onto very fine tulle, a form of embroidered net lace. By 1865 the local embroiderer Louis-Bonnechaux Ferry had begun adding beads and sequins with the same hook, the crochet de Lunéville, a style known as broderie perlée et pailletée. The fashion spread across Europe, declined with the World Wars and changing tastes, and returned with beaded bags in the 1950s. In the later 20th century, beaded haute couture garments were often made in Lunéville.

American Indian beadwork

Many American Indian nations have their own beadwork traditions. In the eastern United States and on the Great Plains, American Indian cultures ornamented clothing and pouches with porcupine and bird-feather quills before glass beads arrived. European glass beads, brought by traders and explorers, partly replaced quillwork: beadworkers used them to mimic the look of dyed quills, and often still combined the two. Western Apache beadworkers in Arizona decorated clothing with beads and made T-necklaces, while Yuman Tribes along the Lower Colorado River made beaded shawl collars. Quillwork remains a distinctively American Indian art, and beadwork continues as a living practice among contemporary Native artists.

If you want American Indian beadwork, buy from Native artists directly or through tribal and Native-run businesses. The US Indian Arts and Crafts Board's Source Directory lists more than 500 such businesses, from artist-owned galleries to tribal enterprises; listings are open to members of federally recognised tribes and tribally run businesses, and the Board states that its links to listed websites do not constitute endorsement.

How does beading behave in wear?

Beading adds weight and hard edges to cloth, so its main weaknesses are strain, abrasion and broken threads. A heavily beaded garment hung on a hanger pulls on its own seams and threads and can distort the decoration. Dust that settles between beads acts as an abrasive. As threading ages and becomes brittle, it can snap during handling, and beads are lost.

How does beading appear on a clothing label?

Beads themselves are not textile fibres, so beading shows up mainly on the care label; the fibre-content rules reach it only through its threads or a beaded textile trim. Under US law, decorative trim “applied by embroidery, overlay, applique, or attachment” is exempt from fibre disclosure if it covers no more than 15% of the article's surface area; when its fibre content is not stated and differs from the base fabric, the fibre line must add “exclusive of decoration” (16 CFR 303.12). That phrase tells you the percentages describe the base cloth only.

The care label, by contrast, must cover every component, trim included. The US Federal Trade Commission tells makers they need a reasonable basis for every instruction, and gives “beads that are known to be damaged in drycleaning” as a case where test results may be needed to show the garment can be cleaned as directed.

How do you tell good beading from poor beading?

Good beading is firmly anchored, matched to a base that can carry its weight, and covered by a care label that accounts for it.

Checks to make with the garment in your hands

• Turn it inside out. Tambour beading leaves continuous lines of chain stitch on the reverse, because the hook works from the wrong side. Those locking stitches hold each bead firmly.
• Lift it by the shoulders. Watch the base fabric around the densest motifs. Fabric that stretches, puckers or pulls at the seams is already under the strain that breaks seams and threads.
• On a new garment, run your palm lightly over the surface. Beads should not shift or click loose. On vintage pieces, look rather than rub, because brittle threading breaks with handling. Gaps in a row, or a loose strand at the edge of a motif, mean threading has broken and more beads will follow.
• Read the care label. In the US, it must apply to the beads as well as the cloth. A warning such as “Remove trim” is the kind of special instruction the FTC expects makers to give where one component needs different handling.

Red flags on vintage pieces

• Glass beads with fine crazing, crusty or sticky deposits, or cracks: signs of unstable glass, which conservators advise against cleaning.
• Coloured beads on a piece you plan to dry-clean: in rare cases beads are coated with a coloured, solvent-soluble substance, and the FTC names beads damaged in drycleaning as a known risk.
• A purple tint in beads that were once clear: uncoloured glass can turn purple under strong ultraviolet light.

How do you care for beaded clothing?

Store beaded clothing flat, in the dark, and clean it only as the care label directs. Lay the garment flat rather than hanging it, and pad sleeves and folds with unbuffered acid-free tissue so the weight is not borne by a single crease. Support beaded fringes instead of letting them hang. Keep any beads that fall off in a labelled bag with the garment so they can be stitched back on. For a fragile vintage or heritage piece, conservators advise never immersing it in water or a cleaning solution and referring cleaning to a conservator.