35x15mm antique Venetian millefiori trade bead with two different patterns.
Rare yellow 6 pointed stars on reddish background are mixed with a central row of simple blue/white/red concentric circle murrine.
The light bright yellow in this bead indicates it was made rather late in the higory of these beads, after World War I, around 1920 when the industry started up again with a new chemical formula for yellow glass. Major trade in these beads ended with World War II.
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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