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

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

The card says red; the glass says something more specific. This is an oxblood — a deep brick red with real brown in it, not a bright fire-engine red. In mass it reads as a warm, slightly dusty terracotta-crimson, the red of old sealing wax rather than of a pillar box. If your reference material calls for a clean bright red, this will sit noticeably darker and earthier next to it no matter how the finish agrees.

What the luster does. Luster is a thin pearlescent coating over the bead surface, and here it sits on a fully opaque body. It throws a shifting sheen that moves as the piece moves, and it softens the red at glancing angles into a faintly pinkish shimmer. The tell is in the perforations: they read darker and warmer where the coating did not reach into the cut, which gives a filled area a subtly speckled texture instead of a flat one. On a bead this size that texture is visible, so count it as part of the colour.

Why this is not a substitute for a plain opaque red. A flat opaque red absorbs light; a lustered one keeps catching it. Side by side in the same repair the lustered beads look wetter and more animated, and the flat ones look chalky by comparison. Restoration buyers are the ones this matters to — matching hue while crossing finish categories is the most common way a repair announces itself.

Lot character. Coating density varies across the lot, so sheen strength is not uniform and some beads carry more pearl than others. Aged luster also picks up an uneven cast over time, which is authentic rather than damage. Dark specks in the perforations are normal for this stock, kiln and annealing debris from period production. Plan 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 or Nymo B/D. Antique holes are undocumented and vary lot to lot, and adjacent SVC sizes overlap widely, so test-thread a sample first. We do not expect to source this colorway again. Browse our full SVC reds inventory to compare against your reference material.

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