This antique Venetian millefiori trade bead has so many different murrini patterns that it looks almost like an "end of day" bead, except that the slices are so neatly arranged and are not mixed with random glass crumbs.
Multicolor murrini, including some nice complex chevron canes. 45x15mm
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
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