Millefiori Antique Venetian Trade Bead, Short Elbow, Yellow with Twisted Cane & Murrini 39x13

AFE-1072

Regular price $25.00

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  • Yellow antique Venetian trade bead, short curved shape, aka elbow, 39x13mm
  • Decorated with twisted striped cane and scattered murrini. Althought the design reflects some of the earliest millefiori beads, the bright yellow dates the bead to after 1918 when the pigments for making yellow changed.
  • 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 1900s