Traditional Bead and Bangle Crafts in India

Production of glass was one of the most advanced technical developments of the primeval world. It required knowledge of furnace building, glass recipes and pyrotechnology for maintaining the furnace temperature for weeks. Likewise, working with glass also involves maintaining equilibrium of temperature in the furnace/kiln to keep the glass in semi-molten stage for the entire period of work. The antiquity of glassmaking and glass working in India is 3500 years old; the evidences are mainly in the form of beads and bangles. The furnace-wound glass bead–bangle-makers of Western Uttar Pradesh and drawn glass bead-makers of Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh are few of the last living craftsmen who have inherited a predominant part of technological know-how from their ancestors. There have been very few alterations to their production method since they began the craft production. Their furnaces are either indigenously developed or made based on the knowledge craftsmen acquired from where they migrated. These cottage industries thus hold the key to many archaeological puzzles about glass beads-bangles and furnaces.