This Week’s Theme: Beads
Bead artists, Pam and Michael Knapp, of KQ Designs, created this exquisite Native American beaded crown with an intricately designed mandala as its centerpiece. What a powerful design. My Third Eye and Crown chakras buzz just looking at it.
Our Crowns are fully beaded in the appliqué stitch, using cut or non-cut Czech glass beads, and backed in deerskin. We will work with you to design the style and type of your choosing. This encompasses elements such as size, tribal style, bead color, and pattern.
About Native American Beadwork in general from CameronTradingPost.com:
…it was during the period in history when the Great Plains tribes had been conquered by the American Army, known as the “reservation period” when Plain’s Indian beadwork reached it’s artistic apex. This was a time when the freedom of the nomadic life the Plain’s tribes had known was over. Contact and trade with foreigners was at its apex and many tribes found themselves in close proximity with White culture and other Indian tribes with which they previously had little contact. Beading, most notably among the Lakota, Cheyenne, and Arapahoe, took on an artistry never before seen. The bone awls, Native tanned hides, and sinew thread were sometimes replaced by steel needles, commercially tanned skins, and cotton thread, but many of the Plain’s Indian women still preferred the durability and familiarity of the traditional elements. Designs became more complicated and covered more of the hides of dresses, pipe bags, cradles, and other paraphernalia. Certain designs were considered “tribal property” and tribal styles developed more distinction. Dreams were still a source of sacred design, but the artists were freer to experiment with innovations and borrow ideas from other tribes as well as from White culture. Beaded items were still lovingly and painstakingly created for family and close friends, but a new market opened as White traders and tourists appreciated and bartered for these items as well.
Inspiration for Today
For beautiful eyes, look for the good in others; for beautiful lips, speak only words of kindness; and for poise, walk with the knowledge that you are never alone. ~ Audrey Hepburn
Happy Coloring!
joyfully, Maureen
www.TheMandalaLady.com
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