Rare bead boasting a mix of murrine with two quite different patterns: green chevron and blue and white flower design. 35x12mm.Price reflects the damage
There's more of the green chevron pattern on the other side of the bead
Sadly this interesting bead has some bad chips, although it could be salvaged if you have access to a lapidary saw to cut off the broken section
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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