All seed bead manufacturers say their beads are the highest quality. They can’t all be right. I wanted to find out for myself which seed bead brand really makes the highest quality of beads. I put three Japanese seed bead brands to the test, all size 11. They are all glass beads and woven to 10 x 10 beads square. The brands are Miyuki, Matsuno and Toho. In addition, there’s a Chinese cheap seed bead sort. All of these I had at home in my stash.
Why is quality so important? If you work with uneven-sized cheap beads, you need to sort them first to shapes and sizes. Then you need to compensate unevenness by loosening and tightening the thread to keep rows straight. So there’s a lot of extra work involved and the result won’t be as good as working with better beads. With even-sized beads making any beadwork is much easier. Even-sized, high-quality beads fall in line easily and beading itself is enjoyable. That’s the whole point in beading: to enjoy the process. Good quality does not only concern size but also the color is long lasting and the result looks good!
Here are the results of my bead test, from worst to best. Pictures are enlargened to point out the flaws.
4th place: Cheap Chinese seed beads
It’s really no surprise that really cheap beads are good for nothing. Size of these beads is more like 9-11 than just 11. They seem to come in all shapes and sizes and their metal coating is so thin you can see right away that they are really glass. The color wears off in no time and you can see how poorly camera image is reflected from these beads.
3rd place: Matsuno
Matsuno is almost even-sized bead but in metal color version there are some beads that are bigger and some that are smaller than the rest of the group. In transparent beads every bead is equally big. At first I thought these are metal beads and I wanted to see if glass beads are better. And indeed, transparent beads are much better aligned than metal-colored ones.
2nd place: Miyuki
Miyuki and Matsuno are not far apart but as you look closer, you see there are differences. Both of them have a nice thick metal coating. I didn’t know these are glass beads until I crushed one.
Winner: Toho beads
I bought these from a fair this fall and the saleswoman said she has tried all the brands and now she represents only Toho because they are simply the best. It seems she had a point. These are my first rows of Toho ever and I must say I like them already. They were easy to work with and they look delicious. I would say I have found a seed bead brand I like.
