Bright yellow with brick and a little blue 2 larger 29x11 and 27x9mm, one medium 20x9mm and two small 12x8mm
The bright yellow in these beads indicates they were made after 1918
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
From the collection of Joyce Diamanti, bead researcher, writer and educator
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