This collectable bead is an early example of a classic pattern that was in production for nearly 100 years. This early version, in very good condition, considering its age, is made with the bundled cane technique.
This is clearly identifiable in the irregular edges of the lines. It's also evident in the pits left by air bubbles that broke at some time during this bead's long life.
Pits like that are extremely rare in later beads, as the techniques were perfected.
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 bundling very thin glass tubes 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 and 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
From the collection of Joyce Diamanti, bead researcher, writer and educator
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