white-heart

"It was made with white-heart beads, the small red Venetian glass trade beads with white centers, mixed with all kinds of things that Indians collected as treasures and money," she recalled.

At her best she writes with a piercing emotional clarity and a sense of engagement with the physical world that is both earthy and lyrical (in Black Narcissus she describes a toddler's bare bottom as "fat as white-heart cherries").

Glass from crushed Venetian beads was used for making the glass powder, and the decorative patterns were made of glass derived from Venetian beads, or from small whole Venetian beads such as so-called green heart and white-heart beads.