Portrait beads, also called face beads, are beads made with an image of a human face on them. These type of beads have ancient origins going back over 1600 years, and have been used to make beaded bracelets and other jewelry in locations including Scandinavia, Poland, northern Hungary, and southern Germany.
Their origin is traced back to the late Roman period, A.D. 400-600, when skilled craftsmen of the Roman Empire used glass canes to detail facial features on the beads. Modern versions of portrait beads use photographs as a guide, and are constructed with a process known as millefiori can technique with polymer clay. The facial features on the beads are sculpted individually from thin sheet of polymer clay, made into tubes, and the successive layers are built up from the center to the outside to render the face or hair.