Want to Make Coronavirus Jewelry?

An eagle-eyed shopper found vintage beads that look like the virus particles. File this under weird ways to commemorate a global crisis. 

By Jessie Schiewe

Raise your hand if you’d wear coronavirus jewelry around your neck or wrist. (Lucille Carmichael)

Coronavirus virus particles are too small to be seen by the human eye, but most of us know what they look like thanks to the many large-scale digital images put forth by the media. 

Possessing an alien-like shape, the particles are spherical balls covered with bumps that look almost like armor or a shield. One research paper described the virus’ instantly recognizable shape as having “club-like spikes that project from their surface.” 

Across the boards, people have accepted this shape as the face of COVID-19.  

A computer-generated image of SARS-CoV-2 particles. (Felipe Esquivel Reed/Wikimedia Commons)

The only thing that’s still up for debate is the color of the virus particles, with images showing them in a variety of shades, including blues, greens, and reds. Mainly because of their tiny sub-microscopic sizes, there’s little consensus in the scientific community as to what hues coronavirus virus particles actually are. 

Still, when you see their characteristic shape, you know what they are.

That recently happened to an artist in Los Angeles who was shopping online when she came across beads that had a funny shape. She instantly saw the resemblance: They looked just like coronavirus virus particles. 

Known as sputnik beads, or, less commonly, as bumpy beads, they’re typically handmade of glass through a process called lampwork.

Named for the shape of the first artificial satellite to orbit earth in 1957, sputnik beads have circular centers and are covered with antennae, or spikes.

In the design world, there are also light fixtures known as sputnik chandeliers that have similar branching-off structures. 

Anything can be turned into fashion; even a viral pandemic. (Lucille Carmichael)

The Los Angeles artist, who asked to remain anonymous, stumbled across the coronavirus-shaped beads on Etsy while working on a project to keep her occupied as she shelters in place. 

“During quarantine, I wanted a creative outlet, so I started looking for glass beads online,” she told OK Whatever. “When I was in middle school, I actually made beaded bracelets with my friends, and I even sold them to a local kids store.

“Over the weekend, I found the exact smiley face beads I was looking for and went to purchase them when I realized there were a ton of other beads available. So I started scrolling (62-pages deep), and eventually found these crazy-looking amoeba virus beads. I thought they would look cool on a necklace, so I bought a pack of 48.”

General Bead, the San Francisco-based Etsy store she purchased them from, sells the beads for around $0.62 each, and they’re available in a variety of colors, including clear, orange, black, red, and blue. The ones she chose to purchase were green “with white and blue mini spikes,” according to the product’s description. 

When OK Whatever got in touch with Jill C, an employee of General Bead, she was initially surprised to hear of the coronavirus connection to her beads. 

“I’ve never heard anyone compare these to a virus before, but I can see how it looks like that,” she wrote via email. 

The sputnik beads in her collection all date from the 1980s and 1990s, and were handmade in India and China. Though she has 20 different colors available of them in her shop, sputnik beads are far from best-sellers for her.

But, she noted, the “unique beads” are “really popular with some people.” The artist in Los Angeles is clearly one such person. 

There’s no denying sputnik beads’ resemblance to coronavirus virus particles. (Lucille Carmichael)

Though she confessed that she feared getting the virus just as much as the next person and that she was taking every precaution to prevent that from happening, if she comes out unscathed, coronavirus jewelry handmade by her, while stuck in quarantine, would be an epic way to memorialize such an incredibly strange time in history. 

“I figured I could make them for myself and my friends,” she said. “They’ll be reminders of this crazy and weird time.” 

JESSIE SCHIEWE IS THE EDITOR OF OK WHATEVER. SHE BELIEVES IN MERMAIDS AND THRIFT SHOPS FOR EXERCISE.

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