Rare vintage Chinese deep carved black and red cinnabar genuine lacquer bead 15mm. b7-cin237

Old Chinese deep carved cinnabar lacquer beads. This bead was made with multiple layers of red and black lacquer and then hand carved revealing the striping of red  layers in the grooves of the design. The visible layers are evident in the genuine old lacquer cinnabar. The layers and tooling are faintly visible looking through a loupe.  Beads of this quality have been out of production for over 50 years Purchased in Hong Kong in the 1970s.

Modern cinnabar beads are generally made with a molded resin rather than lacquer.  The nicer slightly older ones add some hand carving to create more crisp detail.  Most of the ones produced today are simply molded resin.