Antique SVC Venetian Greasy White #3 Seed Beads 11/0

Greasy White #3 — Antique SVC Venetian Seed Beads, 11/0

Read this before you order if you are matching a white: these are not opaque. Greasy glass is semi-translucent, so light enters each bead and diffuses inside it rather than stopping at the surface. Against an opaque chalk white they look softer and slightly grey; in mass they read as a cool, milky, faintly blue-leaning white rather than a flat one. If your reference piece used an opaque white, this is the wrong material no matter how well the hue agrees.

What greasy means, and why it is match-critical. Greasy is a property of the glass formula itself, not a coating — which is why it cannot wear off, and why no modern bead reproduces it convincingly. The degree of translucency varies bead to bead: some read nearly opaque, others are clearly glassy, and both are authentically greasy. Set beside opaline, which carries a pearlescent sheen at the surface, greasy is the quieter of the two — the glow is internal, with no shell-like cast on top.

Lot character. Dark specks in the perforations are normal for this stock — kiln and annealing debris from period production rather than anything introduced since. Because the glass is semi-translucent they show more readily than they would in an opaque bead. For count-critical or uniform-face work, plan on a pre-sort.

Sizing and threading. SVC 11/0 runs 2.20–2.50mm with a hole in the 0.60–0.70mm range, roughly 15–16 beads to a strung inch. A size 10–12 needle with 0.10–0.18mm thread suits it. Antique holes are undocumented and vary lot to lot, and SVC sizes overlap more than modern ones do — test-thread a sample before anything count-critical.

Uncirculated old stock, never strung for trade. Small lot, finite old stock. Browse our full SVC whites and neutrals inventory to compare against your reference material.