Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Beads, Set of 3 Different Sizes in the Same Pattern
SKU: AFE-2203
Sale price
$12.00
Shipping calculated at checkout
Only 1 in stock
Description
- These beads are priced and sold as a collector/designer12 set of 3
- This set shows off how not only the size of the cane slices but also the size of beads with the same pattern can vary. Sizes range from 9x10mm to 12x8mm
- In each there are red, white, and blue star patterns in a field of green separated by sections of bright red and bright yellow. As the size of the bead shrinks, so do the components.
- The bright red and yellow colors date these beads to around 1920
- 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 in the early 1900s