Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Bead, Large Flat Oval with Multi-Color Designs, 41x20mm
SKU: AFE-1141
Sale price
$39.00
Shipping calculated at checkout
Only 1 in stock
Description
- Very unusual shape with many different bright and colorful murrine 41x20mm
- Images show both sides of the bead, the white spot on one side isn't a break in the glass, it's a mostly white murrini that got smeared a little too much
- 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