Publications
The Art of Beadwork
The Art of Beadwork
Valerie Hector
Since its publication in Spring of 2005, The Art of Beadwork has received numerous positive reviews for its accuracy, beauty, and wide-ranging coverage of the world’s beadworking traditions past and present.
To order the book, click here, and you will be transferred to the Amazon.com website.
Valerie will be happy to autograph your book in person if you present it to her at a show.
Thank you for your interest in The Art of Beadwork.
About the Book
175 Diagrams rendered by Carrie Iverson
160 color photographs
ISBN: 0-8230-0307-8
Watson-Guptill Book (Paperback)
$24.95
8 1/2 x 10 1/2
160 pages
Excerpt From Lois Dubin’s Forward
“Valerie Hector is a gifted scholar and immensely talented artisan whose work I have long admired and always worn with pride. Her respect for the historical traditions of beadwork has brilliantly informed her contemporary creations, pushing this art form to yet another level of excellence.
Now, she has generously revealed the secrets of the craft, in this illuminating cross-cultural overview that synthesizes scholarship and ‘how-to’ projects.”
-Lois Sherr Dubin
Lois Sherr Dubin is the author of:
• The History of Beads from 30,000 BC to the Present
• Native North American Jewelry and Adornment
• Jesse Monongya: Opal Bears and Lapis Skies
(American Indian Master Jewelers)
Reviews
Review by Sidney J. Oliver
posted at www.HandThoughts.com
“The Art of Beadwork: Historic Inspiration, Contemporary Design”
from Master Beadwork Artist and Jeweler, Valerie Hector
Unlike other recent books about beadwork, Valerie Hector’s The Art of Beadwork: Historic Inspiration, Contemporary Design ($24.95 US, New York: Watson Guptill Publications, 2005) begins at the beginning, with a succinct survey of the current archaeological record on first beads and earliest beadwork. 
At present, we date the latter to ca. 26,000-23,000 BCE– a time roughly contemporary with the cave paintings at Lascaux– and to a find of thousands of mammoth ivory beads at an Ice Age site near Moscow. These beads are believed to have been stitched onto hides to form elegant garments for two chldren interred there.
From these origins, Hector traces beadwork through the great era of Egyptian faience (ca. 4,000-323 BCE), the Indo-Pacific bead trade, and the rise of great and lesser European bead manufactories beginning in late Medieval (15th C) Venice, to the ascendancy of Japanese beadmaking in the 1980s. This she credits for much of the “renaissance of contemporary (nonnative) beadwork” in the USA, Europe, and Australia.
Happily for those already familiar with the bead trajectory, Hector adds an intriguing summary of Mesopotamia studies authority Stephanie Dally’s analyses of 
ancient Near Eastern textual references to beadwork. Hector also makes passing mention of bead references in first millennium BCE Indian and Chinese writings. These and her acknowledgement that other art forms-statuary, frescoes, paintings, and the like-can also document beadwork (and bead) history, point the way for possible future contributions to bead studies.
That grounding is a superb basis for the main narrative and graphic content that follows-an ingenious global and historical meander that showcases the work of contemporary beadwork artists in a unique way. Each was specifically commissioned to create a project that was creatively inspired by a museum-quality beadwork specimen from a culture. Each piece is presented with discussion about it and the work that inspired it and with detailed beading instructions and step-by-step beadworking diagrams.
Represented cultures include Han (mainland China), Japan (ancient), Kathi (Gujarat State, India), Sa’Dan Toraja (Sulawesi, Indonesia), Straits Chinese 
(Penang, Malaysia), Kenyah (Indonesian/Malaysian Borneo), Ambai Island (Papua, Indonesian New Guinea), Anient Egypt, Yorùbá (Nigeria), Maasai (Kenya), Dinka (Sudan), Xhosa (South Africa), Ndebele (South Africa), Msinga (or Zulu, from South Africa), England (17th C), Germany (18th C), Wiener (20th C Austria), France, the Plains and Plateau tribes (North America), Achomawi/Atsugewi (North American), Huichol (Mexico), and Chimú (Peru).
Artist contributors include Marcus Amerman, Robin Bergman, Flora Book, David Chatt, Kathryn Harris, Valerie Hector, Jacqueline Lillie, Karen Paust, Don Pierce, Madelyn Ricks, Joyce Scott, and Laura Shea.
As if these riches did not suffice to earn very high marks, The Art of Beadwork is graced by an accomplished 
prose style, numerous top-quality photographs, a foreword by Lois Sherr Dubin, a chapter on beadwork materials, tools, and techniques, helpful notes, a significant bibliography, and– increasingly rare– really good copyediting.
This one belongs on your bookshelf.
Sidney Oliver
HandThoughts Publisher and Senior Editor
May 2005