MEET YOUR MERCHANT: The ancient art of beads

Larry Wahrenbrock is a history buff - make that a bead buff.

He is the owner of The Bead Store, which is filled with, well, beads. Lots of them.

There are strings of beads, stone beads, glass beads, metal beads and precious rock beads that come from the Andes to the Himalayas and everywhere in between.

"They've always been a very intricate part of trade," said Wahrenbrock, who dons a full gray beard. "One of the oldest pieces of material culture that we attribute to the human species is beads."

Wahrenbrock got his start in the bead business in the early 1980s when he started traveling to living history events around the country where he would trade beads.

"We knew that at some point, my wife and I, we didn't want to be on the road," Wahrenbrock said. "That was just the time to open up the store."

So, as Wahrenbrock says, he bought himself a job after opening a shop on North Carson Street.

Fifteen years later, Wahrenbrock is still running the store, which moved to its current location in 2005 after Wahrenbrock's wife, Sandra, died in 2003. He later remarried to Cat Mena, who also runs a basket weaving business out of the store, Sweetwater Baskets.

Many of his customers are collectors, others need materials for projects and some just stop by to look.

"Our philosophy is to get all of the materials and the necessary components for other people to exercise their creativity to the maximum extent possible," he said. His store also offers leather products as well as classes and tools for working with beads, and a silversmith business.

Wahrenbrock said many of his items, dating to the Roman empire and earlier, could be displayed in museums.

"It's probably one of the oldest businesses of people, trading beads, it's been around for a long, long time," Wahrenbrock said. "The people who supply our product have been in business for generations."

Some of those suppliers include a 350-year-old bead making company in the Czech Republic.

"Columbus brought beads on his first trip, it was standard fare," Wahrenbrock said. "Every explorer wants to take something that he feels is going to be desirable to where he's going and will provide him with some kind of a value in order to secure the supplies he needs while he's there."

Wahrenbrock said revenue is down about 20 percent since his peak about three years ago. Regardless, he said he's not planning on going anywhere anytime soon.

"I'm pretty conservative in my business practices," said Wahrenbrock, who said he recently signed a five-year lease. "I'm here because I want to be here."

If you go:

The Bead Store

Where: 2188 Highway 50 E.

Contact: 775-883-8111

Hours: 10-6 p.m. Monday-Saturday

Online: www.tradebead.com