Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Bead, Amber, Brick, White, Navy, 26x10mm

SKU: AFE-959
Sale price $10.00

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Description

  • This is an early bundles cane Venetian millefiori in amber, white, red and black
  • 26x10mm with  rare square cross section, meaning the original cylindical bead had been pressed on all for sides to form a square tube. 
  • Trade beads almost always have holes big enough for 2mm leather cords
  • Millefiori, the Italian name for these colorful beads, means 1000 flowers
  • The beads are decorated with slices of glass canes created either, by bundling super thin glass rods together to form the pattern then fusing them. This is the earlier method. A later innovation involved encasing a round or star pattern single color core with concentric layers of different colored glass.
  • The canes are sliced into murrini, which are laid out on a hot surface as the semi-molten glass cores of the beads are rolled over them, picking up the slices.
  • Made in Venice, Italy for the African trade mid-1800s to early 1900s