Day Eight - Segmented Beads

I've made these before.  They are knacky, but not terribly difficult.  Doing them well requires good heat control and a good sense of proportion.  It is really easy to find myself making a bead of 3.5 segments instead of 4.  Not what I want.  

I actually bought this yellow because I wanted to make these beads.  It is wonderful to find that modern colors are available that so closely match the colors of the ancient beads.  

There are examples of this bead type that have gold foil inside clear glass.  I may attempt this one day with silver foil.  I've tried it in the past, but don't have any examples around anymore.  If I do it, I'll surely put something up here about it.

I speculate that the reason these segmented beads were invented is to make it faster to fill a necklace.  As you can see, they look like 4 seed beads joined together.  Some are 2 segments, others 3, but I don't recall seeing any with more than 4.  Don't take that as gospel, though.  I'm not a bead historian, just someone who enjoys historical beads.