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58 ORNAMENT 36.2.2012 VERY RARE, PRECISELY MADE KIFFA POWDERGLASS BEADS except bright blue spherical bead lower right which is from Oualata. Three have re-ground Czech glass cores while the balance are on powderglass cores. Top right-hand corner bead has ground glass core and mimics a Morfia pattern, while bead below it has same pattern but a powderglass core. Solid blue triangular with chevron pattern is 2.5 x 1.5 centimeters. Courtesy of Thomas Sticker collection. Photograph: Alex and Thomas Stricker. from broken amazonite beads crushed to a fine white powder and mixed together with the colors and a little water to get a cream-like paste. (As in ceramics, the feldspar functions as flux.) Depending on experience, chosen size, shape, and design, it can take the artist between two hours (lozengeshape) and a day or two to complete a single polychromatic triangular, and also certain elaborate round and cylindrical types. While it cannot be proven at this point, there may be a connection between enameling practiced by Moroccan jewelers in Tiznit, (using crushed glass beads as frit) and Algerian jewelers of the Grande Kabylie during the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries; the wet inlay powderglass industry of Mauritania (starting in the nineteenth century); and the dry-form powderglass methods of Ghana (perhaps dating from the mid-nineteenth century). The map shows distances and spatial relations among these three areas of enameling, wet and dry-form (Kroboland) powderglass although Kabylie area of Algeria is not marked. Designs on Kiffas are not a random choice of their makers. Neither decorated as a geometric filler, nor in a copyist tradition, nor had their natural Sahelian environment any influence on design and color. Patterns are taken from beads that have been produced centuries earlier, up to four thousand miles away from their West African birthplace and with the highest religious relevance for women in the Sahel. In many cases a design transfer onto Kiffas remains very close to the precursors; in other instances ancient designs are varied. The highly prized Morfia, for example, confirms that Mauritanian beadmakers make their own interpretations, where a round morfia turns into a triangular-shaped Kiffa, while all designs and colors remain the same. Though the topic of Kiffa designs is too complex to discuss at length here, we examine further the morfia (in Hassaniyya: merviyye = mottled pate-de-verre bead), alternatively called the "Fustat fused rod bead." Its Mauritanian counterpart or equivalent, the triangular-shaped polychrome type, is the centerpiece of a set with a red and blue bead of the same shape, that woman knot into their hair on the left side of the head only (the opposite right side has a carved white conus shell of hemispherical shape, representing fertility). The triangular glass bead often shows three rows of vertical eyes, plus three rows of zig-zags. "God's protection for the tribe" is the message here. The involvement of god – not necessarily Allah – is indicated by the arrangement of the five colors blue, white, red, yellow, and green (that green on Kiffas often, not always, appears black is due to the porous green glass attracting grease/skin oils which makes the green glass appear darker, hence black). Red, yellow and green are the first colors of the rainbow; the violet and blue that follow are hardly visible in a blue sky. The wonder of a rainbow, reaching earth from the sky in wonderful colors, was not only seen as god-sent, but also equivalent to rain, hence life for man and beast, especially in an arid environment. The three rows of eyes symbolize protection against evil and all kinds of bad forces. The zig-zags equate the image of a tree with the branching of the human race or its genealogy. Through branching the tree symbolizes the tribe and thereby the ancestors to whom respect and sacrifice must be given. How were muraqad used? Aside from the dominating religious aspects of such beads, Kiffas are part of the artistic and elaborate hairdos (dafra) of Mauritanian women. The main characteristic is the structure of the Charvita (Hassaniyya = hair-crown) an unusual metal-frame with human and artificial hair wrapped around, that also serves as support for the woman's mlahfa or veil. The whole composition sits on top of the woman's head, but is connected and woven into her