Antique Veneitan milliefiori trade bead, of blues and green with brick
Here we have another unusual murrini pattern looking either like swirling images from outer space or close-ups of something under a microscope, which is encased in red, white and green so from a distance it looks like just another millefiori flower pattern. 37-13mm
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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