Maridadi in Boston

My dining room table is awash with beads.  Several partially completed necklaces lie in a row.  Half way through designing one necklace, I have an idea for another or for several others and I reach over to pluck new beads from bowls and string just a few together to see how they would work in unison.  It is  finishing them off that is difficult for me.   Repetition, completion ---- not my strong suit.  I’m happier launching in to something new, the unknown.

Luckily I have a deadline.    In October, my friend Roseanne is hosting another Maridadi jewelry show for me in Boston.   I named my business (and my red Prius) Maridadi.  It is a Swahili word and means “stylish, tasteful, pleasing to the eye”.  

Roseanne visited us a few times when we lived in Kenya and came with me to the colorful, sprawling outdoor markets where vendors from all over Africa displayed their wares.   We would sit on small three-legged stools under the equatorial sun.  Sometimes a trader would hold a large colorful umbrella over us for shade while we sifted through baskets of old Venetian trade beads and ornate silver pendants from Ethiopia and Yemen.  We would finger strings of beads hand -crafted from Kenyan bone and horn and ostrich eggshell.  Colorful recycled glass beads from Ghana, tiny striped trade beads, bronze bi-cones, bauxite, coconut, malachite ….. 

Roseanne purchased dramatic necklaces and developed a  passion for wooden headrests.  She has quite a collection now, arrayed artistically in her high-ceilinged Boston apartment.  I will be able to use these to display my jewelry -- drape the length of a slim necklace over a finely carved Ethiopian headrest,  coil a chunky choker at the base of a solid Samburu one.

I have an embarrassment of beads.  I could open a shop.  They fill cupboards and drawers, spill out of baskets, roll under the table.  It’s an addiction.   And stringing them in pleasing and unusual designs is also an addiction and one of the most pleasurable things I know. 

The Boston show has given me an excuse to clutter my long dining room table again. Whole days will fly by as I sit happily working with these tiny bundles of beauty.  Many of the beads have traveled vast distances over huge spans of time.  It seems amazing that they have arrived here, in my possession.   I hold them in my palm and, as I thread them on to a necklace, I  wonder where they are headed next on their journey.   Massachusetts, perhaps?

   

  

and still beads galore!