Some trade beads popular among hunters and trappers in the north American west acquired descriptive "camp fire names". This style, with a white or off-white core and a few scattered brick and blue murrines, was called the Bead Paw
The edges were sometimes cut at an angle like this one 14x14mm
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 early-1800s
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