Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Beads, Baby Roosters! Black, Amber & Brick, Sold Individually
SKU: AFE-2278
Sale price
$15.00
Shipping calculated at checkout
Out of stock
Description
- These ultra rare beads are priced and sold individually
- Baby version of the famous Rooster, symbol of the island of Murano where millions of antique Venetian trade beads were made for shipment to Africa
- Very rare mini beads with rooster design in black, cased in amber, then brick and finally surrounded by fine black and white lines similar to the big rooster beads, but in this small scale they tend to disappear into the brick color on at least one side of each bead.
- Sizes vary from 12x9 to 14x10mm
- The shape of the roommster has sometimes also been described as a map of Africa
- Millefiori, the Italian name for these colorful beads, means 1000 flowers
- The beads are decorated with slices of glass canes created either bundling very thin glass tubes together to form the pattern, then fusing them, or encasing round or chevron pattern canes in concentric layers of different colored glass.
- The canes are sliced into murrini, which are laid out on a hot surface and 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