Contemporary Cowrie Shell Bone Bead Tennis Bracelet.

This bracelet is full of natural beauty and highly fashionable. It will make a great anklet as well as a bracelet thanks to its adjustable design. This one has been finely hand strung with beautiful genuine cowrie shell beads. These cowrie shells have been strung with genuine natural bone beads and dyed bone beads in a distinct alternating pattern. This sensational tennis bracelet is 8" long and can be adjusted from a size 7 to a size 8.

Cowrie shells were used as a form of money in China over 3000 years ago. Their uniform characteristics, durability, availability, and the fact that they can be tied and strung together for safe keeping all contributed to their acceptance as monetary currency. While beads made from varying valuable materials were functioning as the primordial form of money, they were also being used as signs of wealth, status, culture, and religion in the form of jewelry and other adornment. Although the industrial revolution changed the way we value and look at beads, their prolific use still continues today in the same ways it has for thousands of years. A single bead can be produced from plastic in a micro second for a fraction of a cent. Despite this fact, when embroidered together in the thousands by hand on a wedding dress they can increase the value of the dress exponentially, conveying the status, wealth, and individuality of the wearer just as they have in the past. It's the little things in life that sometimes give us the most pleasure and defining character. We as humans, from the earliest times, have considered the adornment of our person to be one of the necessities of life - as essential as food and shelter.