Beads Across Borders
Bellingham artist collects artifacts, creates new accessories
STORY BY SHELBY ROWE | PHOTO BY NICK DANIELSON
Silk Indian saris embroidered with gold thread and silver beads hang from a post inside Oasis Bead Lounge in downtown Bellingham, Washington. African masks that are hundreds of years old decorate the walls next to modern, metal versions.
Cultures from around the world are preserved through ancient beads that have been strung into ornate necklaces or sit atop glass bottles on wooden shelves.
The oldest piece is a necklace made in 3,000 B.C., which a San Francisco woman bought on Etsy for $6,000.
Owner Karen Murphy stands barefoot inside the shop and peers through thick glasses.
“These are my favorite right now,” she says, tugging on two multi-strand necklaces she made with beads from several different countries, including China and Afghanistan, as well as some she crafted from polymer, a clay-like material. “My pieces are unique and it wasn’t originally appreciated to mix culture or put glass beads with polymer. It took a while, but I got quite a following in Seattle.”
Most of Murphy’s inventory is from a splurge 20 years ago when her husband sold his business and she used $1.5 million buying beads from all over the globe at trade shows in New York and Washington D.C to make necklaces, bracelets and earrings.
On her 40th birthday, she gifted herself a polymer class and started making ornate buttons and eventually beads. A woven basket sitting atop the glass front counter holds handmade camels, long-maned lions and intricate figures that Murphy crafted from polymer.
Her first shop was a studio she shared with 10 to 15 other artists in an old brick building in Seattle 28 years ago, but her love for the arts truly started when she was 3 years old, sculpting foxes out of clay.
Some of her cultural inspiration came from an around-the-world trip where she toured dozens of countries in her early 20s.
“I’m really fascinated by how much art other cultures have absorbed into their life. People wear their wealth in their jewelry and their ornate clothing. They make things by hand and everything is very decorated. Here it’s rare,” she says. “We don’t have the depth of expectation of beauty in our intimate individual environment.”
Pieces of Murphy’s own life live amongst the artifacts. Her mother’s 1940s fur coat is draped over a beaded chair from the Yaritza tribe in West Africa and bronze-coated statues of Murphy’s family share a shelf with strands of glass beads.
As she gets older, Murphy says, it’s become her job to find homes for the beads with people who appreciate their cultural significance.