The process of making Mauritanian wet-core powder glass Kiffa beads involves the crushing of
glass into fine powder and mixing it with saliva or gum arabic as a binder. In order to build a core for a triangular bead, two blades of stiff grass were fastened together to form a cross shape. The moistened crushed glass was built up around this grass support in a triangular form and smoothed with a razor blade. Decorative patterns were applied with fine needles, using slurry that consisted of finely crushed glass, which was moistened with saliva, or a few drops of gum arabic mixed with water. The beads were then covered with a small tin such as a sardine can, and fired on metal plates or flat pottery shards, without the use of molds
During the second half of the 20th century, environmental changes led to droughts and famine which forced many families in Mauritania to abandon their traditional nomadic way of life in order to survive. While Kiffa beads had become highly desirable objects for collectors in the western world, the art of making them was becoming extinct in Mauritania. Only a handful of master bead makers, all of well-advanced age, are documented from the 1970s, and reports indicate a noted lack of new apprentices who might have been interested in learning the technique in order to keep the craft alive. Hausa traders were combing the Mauritanian countryside to bring out whatever they could find, regardless of quality. However, as these beads were never produced in significantly large quantities it became increasingly difficult to find them, let alone to find perfect examples. Some traders resorted to offering beads that had been repaired in transit, some more successfully than others. Broken beads were joined together with glue, and damaged or chipped beads which had suffered from decoration loss were touched up with oil paint or nail varnish. Chips and missing chunks were filled in or replaced with a variety of materials ranging from resin and clay to plaster, and then painted.
The first beads originating from this production were crudely executed and are often described as lacking all the attributes that make traditional Kiffa beads so attractive and appealing. Their brightly colored patterns and commonly mottled or lumpy surfaces lacked detail and gave evidence of poor craftsmanship. After almost two decades of this revival the question remains why contemporary Kiffa beads do not match the high quality and craftsmanship observed in traditional beads. Do the modern bead makers prefer creating new shapes, and applying their own, much simpler, designs, rather than copying the more time consuming traditional decorations of fine lines and intricate patterns? Or is it possible that the old art of creating such intricate decorations has been lost? As modern Kiffa beads are made to order and produced for marketing, it is possible that quantity might be getting priority over quality. Another explanation for the inferior quality of contemporary Kiffa beads may be the bead makers’ choice of source materials and tools. Whereas fine needles were once used for applying decorative patterns, present-day use of fairly crude wooden sticks hinders the execution of fine lines and intricate patterns. As changing ways of life have resulted in a change of values, the art of making Kiffa beads has ceased to be a form of worship and present-day bead makers may feel less bound by traditions and less restricted in their creativity. Finally, bead making today is a means of making ends meet in everyday life. Although the town of Kiffa, where most of the bead makers live and work, is the second largest town in Mauritania, the great majority of its inhabitants survive on the traditionally meager subsistence of Saharan settlements, and small scale production and marketing of beads provides but a modest, albeit welcome, additional income
