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Extract from the June 2010 Magazine
June 2010 Magazine Pages 4-5 EUROPEAN GLASS BEADWORK
1700-1950S
The B.G.L. Fried Collection

by Bertrand Fried
Gustave Fried, my grandfather, was a bright, visionary young man looking for fortune and a future in Paris in 1884. He seized a lucky opportunity to supply Bohemian glass beads to haute couture houses, their embroiderers and fashion accessory designers. Gustave soon sent for his younger brother Otto and created Fried Freres in 1886. The youngest brother, Georges, joined them later and the firm opened its shop in Paris at 13 rue du Caire (where it is still), an export agency in Gablonz (today's Jablonec) and, later, a shop on Princes Street in London. In the 1940s, their cousin, Harry Bash, opened Du Caire on Broadway in New York.
My father, Lucien, grew up with beads and as a passionate entrepreneur joined the business with his cousins. He worked closely with top designers and Czech factories to create new products, new shapes and colours. He started collecting too, adding to the first examples inherited from Gustave. I still remember the time he spent visiting antique and brocante fairs, searching for beaded objects of all kinds. I really did not understand his fascination. It was only when I reached my fifties that I appreciated the pure beauty of beadwork. Soon after that true passion came to the fore and I became an avid collector myself and a visitor to every possible source - fairs, antique and vintage shops, websites ...

June 2010 Magazine Page 44I could not resist showing this sweet little doll just found at Hirst Antiques in Portobello Road and probably home work on a 1920s German porcelain doll. It uses the net stitching technique with ruby- and opal-coloured rocaille beads separated by a belt of Czech lopho (carnival) green faceted beads. It was sold to me as a frozen Charlotte which seems unlikely for a 5-inch high piece.

Since I retired, having worked for half a century supplying Parisian and worldwide haute couture with beads, rhinestones, paillettes, etc, I have discovered that I can allow myself plenty of time to appreciate, learn and buy. Meeting and exchanging ideas with dealers, collectors and restorers, many of them with great knowledge and taste, is enriching and helpful to my growing collection.

What to choose
There are certainly a huge number of beaded objects on the market from the last two centuries, so perhaps it would be helpful to say what guided my selection. The primary factor for me is beauty: the harmony of colours and the quality of workmanship in the realisation of a particular piece. I also look for special techniques, purity of the style and its characteristics and the rarity and choice of the beads. Although the entire collection is devoted to glass bead objects (bags, purses, pictures, fashion accessories, cases, cushions and ornamental pieces), I chose to be more precisely focused on objects made of cut beads, in particular the famous one-cut 'Charlotte', exclusively produced in the Czech Republic. I want to pay homage to this unique Bohemian wonder, a superb one-facet bead, and to the people who invented it, perfected it and are still producing it today in the Jablonec area.
Of course, I also have wonderful items created with glass beads from France and all over Europe as well as pieces made with metallic beads from England, France and America, a few sable pieces from the 1700s and examples of Victorian, Art Nouveau and Art Deco work through to the 1950s.

Starting a collection
Some collectors make style their first consideration -the artistic testimony of a period. Others concentrate on a particular item, such as purses. Personally I have done neither of these, nor have I been a systematic collector who ticks off boxes or fills gaps. For me, there must be a feeling of delight and pleasure, a coup de coeur which tells me I am looking at something quite special. But then I had the advantage of a small inherited collection. Starting out with a blank slate, there are so many types of objects available that it makes sense to try and focus one's ambitions.