Description

This beautiful necklace bead strand was made using a glass working technique known as ‘millefiori’ from the Italian ‘mille‘ – thousand and ‘fiori’ -flowers. It involves making a design with pieces of glass and then heating and drawing (pulling) the assembled design to make ‘canes’ which carry the design along the entire length. The canes are then cut into short lengths and the pieces are used to create colourful and unique jewellery or items such as vases and paperweights. The technique was most famously developed and exploited by the glass workers on the island of Murano near Venice and at one time millefiori beads, known as trade beads, were used as a currency.