Recently there has been excitement about the role India seems to have played in glass beads production. In India, as early as the 4th Century BC, glass was used to create false gems and there was established glass manufacture in Ceylon from the 3rd c. BC. India is also believed to be the first to develop the method of creating gold and silver foil beads, which were exported all over the world.

History
The bead production and exportation port city of Arikamedu, earlier known as Viraipattinam, has gained quite a bit of interest among the archaeologists. Within it's ruins have been found early furnaces and the earliest evidence of the drawn and cut method of creating beads. Arikamedu suddenly became the center of research for the archaeologists looking for the historical marks of Indian glass beads. The bead production in the Arikamedu area continued with little interruption up to the 1600s, constituting the largest and longest-lived glass bead industry. Indian craftsmen and the importation of their technologies, through the East and Middle Eastern regions. Each of their glass centers appear to have made their own glass, not recycling Western glass or distributing from a central site.

Centre of Excellence
The variety of Indian Glass Beads is enormous. Jaipur in Rajasthan has long been a glass bead center and craftsmen here efficiently grab various techniques from all over the world and as well as those found in India. The speed and quality of their workmanship is also unbeatable as they have been doing it for hundreds of years. Varanasi and Firozabad are other places renowned for Indian glass beads. The successors to the Indo-Pacific beadmakers now live in a small village in southern India, making it a sought after place for sourcing glass beads from India.