Beauty in the Eye of the Beader : Artisans: A free, two-day bazaar with vendors and displays will take place at the Bowers this weeked as part of the Art of Adornment festival.

It’s show-and-tell at every meeting of the new Bead Society of Orange County, where members, freighted with the fruits of their obsession, ogle one another’s baubles.

“It’s copal,” said society president Jackie Kilcoyne, fingering the amber-like, mushroom-size orbs she’d strung together before a recent meeting.

“It’s very wonderful,” said an admiring Marian Sanders, silver frogs dangling from her ears.

“I’ve never believed less is more,” said Jackie Little, wearing five pounds of imported turquoise, silver and coral around her neck.

These bead junkies recently gathered at the Bowers Museum of Cultural Art in Santa Ana, where the nonprofit society will host its first Bead Bazaar this weekend.

Some 35 vendors will sell loose beads, ancient, antique and contemporary, from around the world. Expect to find brilliantly colored African trade beads, glistening contemporary art glass beads, Fimo face beads and earthy jasper, turquoise, agate and onyx beads.

Also up for purchase: finished jewelry pieces, some by society members, antique textiles and garments, folk art and artifacts.

The free bazaar is part of Art of Adornment, a festival featuring jewelry and clothing exhibits and sales, a fashion show, related workshops and demonstrations, photographs by Dana Gluckstein of indigenous peoples in native dress, ethnic food and dance performed in traditional garb.

All of it happens Saturday and Sunday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the Bowers, the society’s sponsor. The event is in sync with the museum’s mission to explore traditions of the Americas, Africa and the Pacific Rim, said festival organizer Debra Boudreau, who runs the museum’s store.

“The way people adorn themselves reflects what’s happening in their lives or happening in their tribes,” she said. Whether it’s a wedding, harvest or holy ceremony, “Art of Adornment is a conduit for us to learn about other cultures,” she said.

Education is likewise a top priority of the year-old bead society, dedicated to enriching the public’s knowledge of the artistic, historical and intercultural significance of beads, which have been around about as long as loincloth.

“Handling an old bead is so exciting because you’re making a connection with someone who lived thousands and thousands of years ago,” says society co-founder Gloria Cooper of Tustin. “It gives you an idea of who you are and that all people are related.”

Society meetings, typically slide lectures, are held the fourth Saturday morning of each month. Last Saturday’s speaker was Adel Boehm-Mabe, who showed compelling photographs of the remote Nepalese rice farming village where she lived for two years. A table was laden with beads, talismans and jewelry she acquired there.

The village’s inhabitants are deeply spiritual people who attribute great powers to the humble pieces they wear, thought to ward against disease or to protect wearers from falling off the steep cliffs they farm, Boehm-Mabe said.

“The thing that binds these people together,” she said, “is that they have a very strong belief in what these beads can do.”

The bead society was formed after a friend of co-founder Cooper approached the Bowers store, which carries beads and jewelry, about sponsoring a local club. Cooper, like many of her friends, was tired of driving to Los Angeles year after year for that city’s bead society functions.

“We really had a need for it in Orange County,” Cooper said. “I knew we had enough interest here.”

The local society numbers about 85. Most members make and sell their work. Speakers have discussed bead weaving, vintage beaded bags and Australian opals. Annual membership, which waives a $3 non-members’ meeting fee and will soon include a newsletter, costs $20, plus $30 to join the Bowers. Museum membership ($20 for seniors) provides museum admission, a 10% discount in the museum store and other benefits.

Art of Adornment will also offer exhibits of private ethnic jewelry collections and demonstrations of ceramic bead making, silver wire wrapping, gem carving and cutting and polishing. All events outside the museum, such as the bazaar, are free. Events inside require a $4.50 admission fee.

There will also be face painting (the ancient practice has been used to indicate status and attract the opposite sex), a narrated fashion show of African, Asian and Mexican regalia at 1 p.m. Sunday and Gluckstein’s “Keepers of the Dream,” black-and-white photographs of people of Haiti, Kenya, southern Mexico, Australia and Bali.

“In tribal cultures, the roots of adornment are generational and tell of one’s connection to family, tribe and spiritual philosophy,” Gluckstein said. “Adornment is about revering the sacred in a living art form. The essence of adornment is the transcendence of ordinary life, the desire to merge with the divine, to become beatific.”

The Bowers Museum of Cultural Art, 2002 N. Main St., Santa Ana. (714) 567-3600.