Antique SVC Venetian Opaline White #1 Seed Beads 10/0

Opaline White #1 — Antique SVC Venetian Seed Beads, 10/0

Two things get returned as the wrong white, so both go first. These are not opaque, and opaline is not the same finish as greasy. Opaline glass is recorded as translucent: it passes light without letting you see through it, and it carries a pearlescent, nacre-like sheen at the surface. The overall read is a clean bright white with a faint shell-like warmth riding on top rather than a chalk-flat white.

Opaline against greasy, since the two get shelved together. Greasy glass diffuses light inside the bead — the glow is internal and quiet, with nothing sitting on the surface. Opaline puts the event at the surface instead: warmer, more visibly pearly, and directional as the light moves across a filled area. In a restoration context they are not interchangeable, and a panel worked half in one and half in the other will show the seam. Both also differ from a true opaque white, which stops light dead and reads noticeably heavier.

Lot character. Dark specks in the perforations are normal for this stock — kiln and annealing debris from period production rather than anything introduced since — and because the glass passes light they show more readily than they would in an opaque bead. The strength of the sheen varies across the stock, from clearly pearly to a soft glow. 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.

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. A size 10–12 needle with 0.10–0.18mm thread — KO, One-G, Nymo B or D — suits it. Antique holes are undocumented and vary lot to lot, and adjacent SVC sizes overlap widely, so caliper the beads rather than trusting the card notation, and test-thread a sample first.

Whites carry the structure in period beadwork — grounds, outlines, the field that everything else is read against — and an opaline white keeps that field from going flat under artificial light in a way an opaque white cannot. We do not expect to source this colorway again. Browse our full SVC whites and neutrals inventory to compare against your reference material.

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