Features

Beads be with you
Local beader shares her passion in new book

By Bethany Homrighaus

It’s safe to think of Penelope Diamanti as the DC area’s ambassador of beads. This 54-year-old Takoma Park resident not only works tirelessly to stock her three local Beadazzled stores with the most interesting and vibrant offerings she can unearth, she is also committed to the act of inspiration. Diamanti’s new book, Beadazzled: Where Beads and Inspiration Meet, says it all.

“What I wanted to do with the book is show that stringing beads is an artform—the vast diversity, the creativity, the skills involved. Just to get it the respect,” she says simply. The self-published volume is now available in Beadazzled stores, online (www.beadazzled.net and www.amazon.com), as well as other bead stores. It features 208 pages of bold color images by William L. Allen, who recently retired as the editor of National Geographic Magazine, and was expertly designed by Connie Phelps, who served as the magazine’s design director. “I got an amazing team,” Diamanti says. (Her collaboration with Allen and Phelps results from a 20-year friendship that began when they worked together at the National Geographic Society, and continued although Diamanti left the organization in pursuit of beads.)

Through publishing her book, Diamanti hopes to showcase leaders in the field while introducing talented unpublished designers. Kathleen Manning, who’s worked for Beadazzled for nine years and teaches beading classes at the DC store, happily benefited from Diamanti’s egalitarian effort. One of Manning’s necklaces, an iridescent collar of abalone shells, is featured in the volume’s “Nature” chapter. “This is my first time!” she says. “My jewelry has never been in print. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, especially since I work at Beadazzled. I like Penny’s vision, and I want to inspire people, too. It’s exciting for me to be a part of the book.”

Several copies of the unbound volume are stacked on a round table in Diamanti’s Takoma Park office, and the glossy cover design radiates color. The featured necklace, one of many designs by Grazia Zalfa, sheds light on Diamanti’s taste: chunky turquoise surrounded by Indian silver, a single large African amber bead, orange and red vinyl heishi, and a silver Tuareg amulet box. These particular beads are significant in their age and construction, and remain among Diamanti’s favorite materials.

So how does one acquire an interest in things like Tuareg silver? In Diamanti’s case, a lifetime of global travel was key. Her father, Walker Diamanti, worked for the US State Department, which stationed the family in exotic locales. They resided in Switzerland (where Penelope was born), Greece, Germany, and several African countries. In the early ‘70s, Diamanti was a self-described “flower-child” at UC Berkeley who suddenly found a passion for beads. “I didn’t start buying beads until my parents were in the Ivory Coast, right about the time I was graduating from Berkeley. I discovered the African trade beads in the market there and was just gone.” Diamanti laughs to herself as she pinpoints the genesis of her “addiction,” a common word beaders use to describe their bead-buying habits.

Caito Ambrose, at left, who designed two necklaces appearing in Beadazzled: Where Beads and Inspiration Meet, with book author and publisher Penelope Diamanti.

The undergrad found herself at Berkeley with a tin trunk full of treasures, and taught herself to design with them. In her book’s introduction, Diamanti writes: “So I stumbled into making beaded jewelry long before the explosion of bead books, bead stores, and special beading materials. I strung my first designs on dental floss and finished them with clasps I made from hardware-store wire.”

Friends clamored for her necklaces. “I started selling on a small scale to friends, then doing consignment for stores, and then small retail fairs. I paid all my expenses for graduate school by stringing beads. I kept thinking I would give it up, but then I kept buying more beads. I understand my customers because I am one,” she declares, laughing.

Diamanti settled in the DC area in 1978, after earning a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Colorado. She worked as a filer and cataloger in the Library of Congress’s rare books division for about a year, where, she says, “I spent all my breaks trying to research beads and discovered that there was virtually nothing in print about them at that time.”

Next, Diamanti took a job as a researcher in the book division at the National Geographic Society. She was thrilled. “That was a really good place for me because I was finally around people who traveled a lot, and I didn’t feel like such an oddity,” she admits. Although she enjoyed her work immensely, she confides, “But at that time it was very hard for women to move into writing, so I left to pursue the beads.”

At this point, Diamanti began buying beads wholesale in order to turn them around in a retail market, which was “simply a way to support my addiction,” she says. She did this while selling her own pieces to the Smithsonian. “I had started out with the Museum of African Art when they were still independent, and they got taken over by the Smithsonian, and that got my foot in the door with the Smithsonian. It’s very hard to get in [there],” she states, adding that the necklaces and earrings were “hot, hot, hot, for about three years.” Museum store buyers were Diamanti’s primary customers for several years before she launched Beadazzled.

The flagship store opened in Dupont Circle in September 1989, “to coincide with the Second International Bead Conference,” Diamanti states. She opened her second shop in Baltimore’s Mount Vernon Square neighborhood in 1992, and two years later introduced the third store in Mclean, Virginia’s Tyson’s Corner Center. It follows that Diamanti modeled her retail outlets after bead bazaars she’d frequented around the world, and this design sense paid off by succeeding in its mission to inspire. Boasting congregations of loyal customers, all three stores are DC-area destinations for locals and tourists alike. Diamanti writes in her book’s intro, “We love to watch our customers grow and succeed in their boundless creativity. And we love being part of the continuum of beadmakers, traders, and designers that stretches from the earliest humans and into the unforeseeable future.”

The bead community, in which Diamanti plays an important role, is not only far-reaching, it is colorful, energetic, optimistic, and fiercely creative. And Diamanti couldn’t be happier to be a part of it.

“In an era when peace is elusive, so many products are mass-produced, and many jobs are unrewarding, I feel blessed that my life’s path involves satisfying work that honors traditional cultures, inspires creativity, and supports and connects people around the globe,” she writes.

Bethany Homrighaus has worked as a Beadazzled salesperson in Dupont Circle for seven months, and has contracted a severe case of bead addiction.

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