Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Bead, Brick, Amber & Blue Elbow Fragment, 30x12mm
SKU: JSD-427
Sale price
$7.50
Shipping calculated at checkout
Only 1 in stock
Description
- Short segment of an elbow bead with chips at one end. 30x12mm
- Here we see the use of cased canes being sliced for the flower-like cross section and laid down between rows of murrini. Also the whole bead seems to have been a little overheated, causing the patterns to melt in a Dali-esque way. It's oddly interesting, not least because of the classic trade bead color combo of brick, amber and blue with a hint of white that works no matter how messy it gets.
- 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, or encasing round or star pattern canes in 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
- From the collection of Joyce Diamanti, bead researcher, writer and educator