Antique SVC Venetian Silver Lined Clear #1 Square Hole Seed Beads 10/0

Silver Lined Clear #1 Square Hole — Antique SVC Venetian Seed Beads, 10/0

The silver is the fragile part of this bead, so it goes ahead of everything else. It is a lining inside the channel, not solid metal, and standing water in that channel is what destroys it. Soaking, ultrasonic cleaning and bleach will tarnish or lift the lining, and once it has lifted there is no putting it back. Wipe with a dry cloth, dry thoroughly after any contact with water, and keep finished pieces out of humid storage.

What you are actually looking at. The glass is clear and does no colour work at all — everything you see is light entering the wall, striking the mirrored channel and coming back out. That is why silver lined crystal reads as a bright point rather than a coloured bead, and why it flares under direct light and goes quiet in shade. In direct light the flash is a cool white-silver; at an angle it warms toward a soft champagne grey.

The square hole is doing something specific here. A squared channel gives the lining flat faces instead of a curve, so it returns light as discrete mirror flashes rather than a single rounded gleam — a harder, more crystalline sparkle than round-holed silver lined stock. The flat internal faces also make the bead sit down in loom and peyote work and stack without rolling, which is the structural reason to choose it for flat, disciplined fieldwork.

Lot character. Lining reflectivity varies across the lot. Some beads read as bright mirror, others have softened to a warm grey where the lining has aged, and that unevenness is authentic to old silver lined stock — it cannot be cleaned back to bright, and attempting it will cost you the lining. Dark specks in the perforations are normal for this stock. Order enough to sort from if you need an even face across a large area.

Sizing and threading. SVC 10/0 runs 2.40–2.70mm with a hole in the 0.70–0.80mm range measured across the square, roughly 13–15 beads to a strung inch, and strung counts for antique lots are estimates. 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 before anything count-critical.

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