This is an unusual antique Venetian millefiori trade bead for several reasons. First it has been slightly flattened paddled, or pressed against a surface while still molten to create 8 slight facets which you can fell if you roll the bead in your fingers.
Second, and even more surprising, is that the murrine seem to have a cased center with a green star/flower pattern, cased in blue, and then white - to which have been added strips red, yellow and two colors of blue glass to create the outer layer. These get a bit messy when pressed together but you can see it cleary in the lower left murrini in the photo.
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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