A bead is a small, decorative object that is formed in a variety of shapes and sizes of a material such as stone, bone, shell, glass, plastic, wood or pearl and with a small hole for threading or stringing. Beads range in size from under 1 millimetre to over 1 centimetre in diameter.A pair of beads made from sea snail shells, approximately 100,000 years old, are thought to be the earliest known examples of is the art or craft of making things with beads. Beads can be woven together with specialized, strung onto thread or soft, flexible , or adhered to a surface
Beads can be made of many different materials. The earliest beads were made of a variety of natural materials which, after they were gathered, could be readily drilled and shaped. As humans became capable of obtaining and working with more difficult materials, those materials were added to the range of available substances. But nowadays synthetic materials were added.
In modern manufacturing, the most common bead materials are wood, and stone
Most glass beads are mass-produced by preparing a molten batch of and pouring it into molds to form the desired shape. This is also true of most beads.
A smaller and more expensive subset of glass and lead crystal beads are cut into precise faceted shapes on an individual basis. This was once done by hand but has largely been taken over by precision machinery.
"Fire-polished" faceted beads are a less expensive alternative to hand-cut faceted glass or crystal. They derive their name from the second half of a two-part process: first, the glass batch is poured into round bead molds, then they are faceted with a grinding wheel. The faceted beads are then poured onto a tray and briefly reheated just long enough to melt the surface, "polishing" out any minor surface irregularities from the grinding wheel.
