Contemporary Trends of the Bead Jewelry Industry in Ghana: A Case Study of the Krobo

Introduction

Natural beads made of shells, stones, and bauxite have been unearthed in Ghana and dated to around 1450 B.C.E. (Kumekpor et al., 1995; Ndaa et al., 2021). Beads were originally constructed of natural materials, but glass beads were introduced by European traders in exchange for slaves, salt, gold, and spices. Krobo, an area in the Eastern Region, is one of Africa’s largest manufacturers of glass beads. John Barbot reported bead manufacturing in Ghana for the first time in 1764. Glass beading did not become generally available until the 1800s, when mass manufacture of beads began (Agyemang et al., 2019). Krobo residents are now prominent glass bead makers in Ghana, in West Africa. The Krobo make glass beads from finely ground glass, with broken and useless bottles and other trash glasses serving as the primary supply. Fused glass fragment beads are created by fusing big bottle glass or glass bead shards together. Mue ne Angma, or writing beads, are traditional glass beads with glass slurry designs that are inscribed before being fused in a second fire. In Ghana, bead jewelry is a labor-intensive procedure, and because many beads are hand-made, individual beads vary in appearance, even within a single string (Saitowitz, 1996).