TURKISH PRISONER OF WAR BEADWORK SNAKES

By John. B. Hawkins
Former President of the AAADA
Crochet, with or without beads, was well established in the Ottoman Empire by the 1870’s. Most bead crochet items made before World War I were done by women for their own use.
There are few examples of beadwork souvenirs made by nineteenth- and early twentieth-century civilians incarcerated in Ottoman prisons, but the bead crochet snakes the subject of this essay were in the main made after 1915.
The majority of beadwork reptiles made in the Balkans…