Antique SVC Venetian Opaque Luster Strawberry #1 Seed Beads 10/0

Opaque Luster Strawberry #1 — Antique SVC Venetian Seed Beads, 10/0

Anyone ordering this expecting a fruit red will send it back. Strawberry here is a chalky, dusty mauve-pink — a muted blush under a pearly sheen, with the perforations reading a far deeper red where the coating stopped short of the cut. That contrast does not sit quietly in the background: a filled area reads as soft pink pricked through with darker eyes rather than as one even pink. If you are matching a solid blush from a photograph, the hole colour is part of what you are buying.

Luster is a coating, not a glass formula. A thin pearlescent film sits on top of an opaque body, which is why the perforations read warmer and darker — the film never reached into the cut — and why the surface texture is faintly speckled rather than uniform. The body underneath transmits no light, so the sheen is the whole of the optical event. Set against a plain opaque pink of the same hue this looks alive at the surface; set against a modern pearl-coat pink it looks quieter and less even, because the period coating was never laid down to a uniform thickness.

Lot character. Coating strength varies bead to bead across the stock — some read frankly pearly, others closer to a soft gloss — and an aged coating carries a slightly milky cast that a fresh one does not. All of that is authentic to the finish rather than damage. Uncirculated warehouse stock of this age carries the occasional off-colour bead, so order enough to sort from if you need a clean single-colour field, and plan on a pre-sort for uniform-face work.

Sizing and threading. SVC 10/0 runs 2.40–2.70mm with a hole in the 0.70–0.80mm range, roughly 13–15 beads to a strung inch, and strung counts for antique lots are estimates. Use a size 10–12 needle with 0.10–0.18mm thread — KO, One-G, Nymo B or D. Antique holes are undocumented and vary lot to lot, and adjacent SVC sizes overlap more than modern ones do, so a caliper and a test-thread are worth the minute they cost.

For restoration work this is the harder finish to fake: substituting a flat opaque pink loses the surface movement, and substituting a modern luster loses the softness. We do not expect to source this colorway again. Browse our full SVC pinks and reds inventory to compare against your reference material.

Uncirculated old stock, never strung for trade. Small lot, finite old stock.