Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Beads, Rare Early Bead Green, Amber, Black, Red, White
SKU: AFE-1951
Sale price
$24.00
Shipping calculated at checkout
Out of stock
Description
- Rare early example of bundled cane mosaic wherein the red and white mini canes are barely fused together. Not quite sure how amber and black stripes next to the green were applied. Robust 35x13mm bead looking for a home....
- 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 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 early to mid-1800s