Antique SVC Venetian Transparent Red #3 Square Hole Seed Beads 10/0

Transparent Red #3 Square Hole — Antique SVC Venetian Seed Beads, 10/0

Loom and peyote workers already know why this one is worth having. A squared perforation gives the bead flat internal faces to bed against, so it sits down in the work and stacks without rolling out of line the way a round-holed bead does. Rows sit truer and tension reads more even across a flat field. On transparent glass the squared channel is also visible through the bead wall, so it becomes part of the look rather than a hidden structural detail.

Transparent means the colour compounds, and that changes what you are matching. A single bead on white reads as a clear warm cherry red. Packed into a field the walls stack and the same glass goes much deeper, close to a dark garnet, still flashing bright colour at the edges and wherever light finds a perforation. Intensity therefore depends on wall thickness and bead density, so judge these against your reference at the density you actually intend to use rather than loose in a dish.

Why the finish category is not negotiable. A transparent red is not interchangeable with an opaque red or a silver lined one at the same hue. Opaque stops light dead, silver lined bounces it back out, and transparent lets it through to pick up whatever sits behind the beadwork. Substitute across those categories and the repair will read as incorrect even when the colour swatch agrees.

Lot character. Wall thickness varies a little across the lot, so some beads read lighter and some deeper — inherent to period drawn glass. The squaring varies too, from crisply square channels to a softened square. Dark specks in the perforations are normal for this stock, and they show readily in transparent glass. Order enough to sort from if you need a uniform face.

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. Size 10–12 needle, 0.10–0.18mm thread in KO, One-G or Nymo B/D. Antique holes are undocumented and vary lot to lot, and adjacent SVC sizes overlap widely, so measure with calipers and test-thread a sample before anything count-critical.

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