Author: VenetianBeadShop

What began as a fascination with the glass of Murano has become a way of life. Our webstore has all you will need to make jewelry, quality findings, stringing materials, Swarovski Crystals and a lot more, but our main focus is the Venetian Glass Bead. We have been an integral part in promoting Venetian glass beads throughout the world as well as helping to breathe new life into traditional Venetian techniques. A few years ago, we introduced our line of Venetian Dichroics to the US through as a result of years of efforts with our beadmakers in Murano. We continue to bring new and innovative ideas to this age old industry. Most recently, we developed the Furnace Glass along with our partner furnace in Venice. It's a blend of old glass making techniques to work with new fashion ideas. We remain a family owned business located in Santa Clara and Sunnyvale, CA, USA where we have been importing Venetian Glass and Murano Glass commercially since 1993. Our wholesale showroom has the largest collection of Venetian Beads on display anywhere.

Dichroic – Where Old Meets New

We took dichroic glass back to Venice after we encountered Jerry Sandberg and saw the beauty in this new decoration. Fortunately, Jerry Sandberg had begun working on dichroic for artist in the early 1970s.
He was working at a vacuum-coating laboratory in southern California in the solar cell industry when he saw an artist digging through the trash for broken pieces of dichroic. He was a jeweler as well as engineer and became interested in the creativity. He worked these three scavenger artists to create the first dichroic glass designed for the art industry, Cyan/Red; Magenta/Green and Yellow/Blue.
Today, some forty years later, the equipment CBS (Coatings by Sandberg) uses is as high tech as its companion industry, solar cells for satellites and the photography industry. These machine cost around $2M and apply the metallic films under vacuum. The more colors, the more layers and longer it takes to produce. By the time we arrived on the scene, Sandberg was already familiar with Murano Glass and had begun coating it. Because glass melts and cools as different temperatures, we can only use Murano Glass to make our beads. This is a very strange marriage of high tech equipment and low tech. We just melt glass around mandrels.
Using Class Technique Adding Dichroic
It took us several years, lots of batches of dichroic which we entrusted to only one of our families who produce beads for us. The cost is high for the dichroic and add to that the shipping round trip from Murano to Los Angeles and then back to Murano. Well you can see how these little bits of glitter are expensive. (And of course the Italian Government likes to make their share on the returning glass.)
When we first took the dichroic to Venice, we had no idea how to teach them to work with it. We solicited the help of a well-known insect artist in Venice, only to be told by him that he had no intention of sharing his knowledge with any “Muranese”. He is Venetian so a little of the feud between Venice and Murano. (So much for that, we were on our own.)
So we went to work with one of our beadmakers, an ex-maestro in a major furnace. His knowledge of the glass guided us through the early days, but we had no idea the colors that would work. It was an expensive trial and error period taking us about two years before we got a bead we could sell. But we knew inside these magic color wands we had some beautiful beads, if only we could learn how NOT to burn out the color.
It is one thing to make a few beads each day as many lampwork artist do. It is an entirely different thing to produce in quantities that we require. So some compromise has to be reached which requires us working with the bead makers.
On a recent trip, we once again explored how we could make the best use of the dichroic. When our newest line, Carnevale Glitz were still in the fire, we knew they would be a hit. Adding dichroic to our Gold Foil really made the dichroic pop. We could hardly wait for them to cool and taken off the mandrels. The colors really jump our against the exterior gold. So enjoy a bit of old Venetian Bead Making and thanks to Jerry Sandberg, some added amazing colors.
More Information in case you want to learn more:
– The Flow Magazine 2010 – History of Dichroic by Howard Sandberg
– Coating by Sandberg website: http://cbs-dichroic.com/faq.asp#whatisdichroic

Color Secrets of Venetian Beads

In the making of Venetian (Murano Glass) Beads, we are limited by the colors which Effetre makes but long ago the Venetians discovered they could add other metals to change the colors. You can see from this chart the effects of gold, white gold and silver.

 Gold Foil: The gold warms the color with the richness of the gold showing through, even in the darker transparent colors.White Gold: The white gold gives a more muted tone, but like the silver allows the transparent color to take front stage.Silver Foil: The silver foil leaf adds a crisp new look to the canes and relects the light more. Even using these metals, the amount of transparent glass (the depth of the glass over the metal) and the size of the bead affect how these colors appear.  When we use a small “anima” (the core of the bead. In Italian this means soul.) the metal coverage is smaller giving less of a change to the color. We can only use the metals with transparent glass as the other two types of glass: Opalino (soft colors with a slightly opalesence appearance) and Pastello (opaque glass) are too dark to see the metals.  On these types of glass the metals used are always exterior.  Below is a view of the Effetre Color Chart, which we use daily to design and order beads.

To Anneal or Not to Anneal

Recently we got a question from a customer who asked if all our Venetian Beads are annealed. She had heard that annealing makes the beads stronger. What is annealing? The word comes from the metallurgy and materials science where it has long been recognized it increases the metals ductility and makes it more workable to heat above its critical temperature and then to cool which also relieves the internal stress of the metal. 

            At left, large muffola in a production furnace. At right vermiculite with beads (you see only the mandrels) This is where it comes into the glass world. In glass, it is about mainting the glass at a constant temperature, known as soaking at the annealing point where the glass is too cold to continue working, but will continue to relax, so that the entire piece can gradually cool at the same rate. If the glass were left in the open, you can easily see that the outside would cool faster than the inside. Annealing keeps the temperature constant throughout the bead. For centuries, the Venetians have annealed by:1) flash annealed, where the bead is put back into the flame one final time to heat the bead to a consistent temperature and2) slowly cooled the bead in a container of silica which helps hold the temperature. In older days, the Venetians used the sand from the lagoon which is called “fango” in Italian and was also used for the “bead release”. Today the world uses vermiculite for this process. Vermiculite is a mineral similar to mica which is fire proof. The stresses set up in the bead have a lot to do with the amount of time it takes to make the bead, the decorations, etc and frankly the skill level of the bead maker. In our small beads, they are made rather quickly and there is very little value of annealing other than by use of the vermiculite. 

For our larger, obviously more expensive, beads we do use an annealing oven – called a muffola in Italian. For our Moretti glass, the annealing temperature is about 940F and it is important to keep them at this level and then bring down gradually. For our blown beads they are all annealed, here you see the small kiln beside the furnace. 

Annealing does not make the bead stronger, it insures that there are no stresses set up in the bead during the cooling cycle. Tempering makes the glass stronger – which is the process used for car windows, shatter-proof glass, etc. Below is a type of annealing oven, a kiln produced in the US.Google

A New Treasure For Lampwork

People often ask us how we find new suppliers. When we began in 1993, we thought we were really preparing for this new career. We took a class in importing from a local junior college. Now we could write the book “What they don’t tell you about importing”. We contacted the Italian representatives in the US who were extremely helpful. They gladly faxed and mailed a lengthy list of glass makers in Italy in fact all over Italy. The list was valuable as the input was provided by the various artisan, craft consortiums around Italy.  It made for some interesting trips to small towns and villages all around northern Italy. It was a beginning, but certainly not all encompassing. Maybe it was the best way, as at least some of those had sold to companies outside Italy and maybe knew a little bit about packaging and shipping. 

But as great as our first list was, unfortunately we chose to enter into this business by making our first buying trip in August. Do you know how many Italians there are in Italy in August, the month of the national holiday known as Ferragosto? Well at least 2! We found both of them, along with a good list of hotels and restaurants with air conditioning. The two we found in Murano and Venice are still good friends until today. But then came the shipping? We had learned from our class that there was an “informal” entry into the US which the US Post provided (and still does – when you get a package in International Mail) and that up to a certain limit, we could have shipped to us. And often we shipped the parcels ourselves before leaving Italy.

 

Oh, did we mention that we did not speak Italian at that point,? We were fortunate that we had Vince, the Italian son-in-law. His family living in Italy provided our banking and writing of orders, making the phone calls, translations and being generally invaluable. And our mistakes provided plenty of laughs for them, like the time we were trying to buy canes (canna in Italian) and they thought we were buying cane (dogs in Italian). They were a bit concerned as we described how we would chop us the canes while their eyes grew large in horror as they envisioned us chopping up little Italian puppies. Happily hundreds of dogs did not show up in our local post office before we got these two words straightened out! But as time went on, we learned to speak Italian, understand a good deal of dialect and began spending as much time as possible in Venice and Murano. We graduated from hotels to apartments and from restaurants to having family dinners with our friends and suppliers. The new sources for suppliers came from a very unlikely source, the local bar.  Now remember that a “bar” in Italy is also where you get your morning cappuccino (or espresso if you are Italian). In Venice it is where you drink an “omber” with your friends and neighbors in the afternoon.  And what do we talk about?  Of course the weather, the high or not so high water, and whatever in the world brings you to Venice so often.  At this point, we explain about how we fell in love with the glass of Murano, and invarably, they know someone who makes beads, blows glass or does lampwork. And from there, we may be introduced to a surprising new creator of the things we all love.  Our latest in lampwork is just one of these finds, introduced by a friend in Venice. The family had never sold any products outside of Venice and certainly not outside of Italy.  We are more fortunate today as so many people have emails, it makes our work much easier as we can communicate quickly.  One of our oldest suppliers remembers when his grandfather began selling in Africa. They would receive a request for beads and write a quote, mailing it. Three or four months later, they would get an order. Then they would prepare a fattura, which would take another three or four months for payment and if they were lucky, the beads would be shipped within the same year. As for our latest supplier, on the day our freight forwarder delivered the pendants, they sent me an email, recommending that we sell them all quickly.  They are excited to have their products in the US market.  We hope you’ll enjoy these.   Google

From Canes to Beads – Just Add Heat!

In this world of copycats, we are often afraid to post too much data on how our beads are made. Even in Venice, the moment a new bead appears in the windows of the stores in San Marco Square, everyone begins speculating on how they were made and tries to copy. For our blown beads, it’s a fairly difficult process to copy. Even in Murano there are ony a handful of people who try. It requires special equipment and is long process, not rocket science, but it takes time and hard work. And for our suppliers, it means showing up to work every day and making beads. It’s not “artistic” work to them. It’s a craft in which they excel!

 So here’s a little “how it’s made” to help you understand just why these beads are expensive and to help you appreciate the workmanship, the talent, imagination and dedication of our bead makers. It all begins with a trip to the Effetre glass factory to select canes. (For bead making, this is like the beginning of every fable “Once upon a time” – all our beads begin with this visit.) Unfortunately they do not allow photography inside the factory, but over the years, I’ve been able to make a few. They make the glass in large furnaces about 250 kilo, 550 lbs at the time, so their vast warehouse with canes everywhere and millefiori and mosaics chopped in large bins and sacks. Like Swarovski, there is a schedule for the production of colors which rotates through the year. Special runs are made, but only if you buy the entire production.

 The canes are laid out in rows and put into the kiln to fuse them into a small flat plate. The blowpipe is then rolled over the canes, picking them up to make a tube around the blow pipe. Easier said than done! 

The blower uses a small furnace, in the US, called a “glory hole” to continue heating this tube, and then cutting off sections which he then works to create the shape. You can tell, it’s hard work, in the heat. Here he is cutting off a bead. 
Below is the step by step to see how our sculpted beads take shape. After the beads are cooled, the last process is cold working, known as molato in Italian (meaning to grind) . Much like the traditional Trade Beads were produced hundreds of years ago, these beads are ground to reveal the underlying colors, creating a unique, labor intensive bead as each layer of colors is ground individually. 

From Canes to Beads, Just Add Heat!And here are some other designs in this fabulous bead.

               These are truly little works of art, though our bead maker would never consider himself an artist. You can find these all around Venice and San Marco Square in beautiful jewelry.Google

Carnevale 2013

Jan 30, 2013: Venice is buzzing with preparations for the end of Carnival. It began officially on the 26th of January 2013 and ends on the 12th of February 2013. The Grand Theater has been build in Piazza San Marco, the “Marie” (like the beauty queen) has been chosen, the “best costumes” have been judged and the Venetians have eaten their quota of Fritelle (the small pastries).  Here are some pictures of the pagentry, the costumes, and the craziness that ensues. View our youtube video
Theater San Marco Square – Built for Carnival
There’s no new costume for us this year, just some updating of our hats and masks and a few baubles. We were hoping that no one noticed, but our favorite barista immediately inquired on our costumes. I have already seen the idea for 2014, and it will take all year and I’ll have to save a bundle. The materials for these costumes are quite expensive, as is the lace and decorations and the sewing is intensive – maybe I can trade beads for a seamstress.  The costumes entail not only a gown or men’s outfit, but the shoes, stockings, and most important the masks and the hats which both must be extravagant and over the top.

Red and Black Carnival Costumes
Some costumes are true to the periods of the 15th and 16th century while others are very imaginative. Each day there is a “Best Costume” contest where anyone can enter with the audience judging the costumes. Each days winners go on to compete in the final contest. The green card is vote for the costume, the red a vote against. The winners are presented on the closing day. Don’t worry if you get voted off the stage, you can try again!

Voting on the Best Costume

More Costumes with San Marco in the background
Sat Feb 09 and Sunday 10 brought the huge crowds, especially the younger people who made a party until the wee hours. Venetians tolerate this invasion of their normally quite life and a well staffed police force herds the crowd in a one way traffic by foot to and back from San Marco.

Crowds arriving by Bus and Train walking to San Marco
In Campo San Stefano, a large outdoor market for costumes gives everyone an opportunity to dress in class. And mask stores abound in the city, with prices for everyone.

Shopping in San Stefano for Costumes
Despite our hopes, Monday, 11 February brought us snow and high water bringing a early closure in San Marco of the celebration for the day. Fortunately the winds turned and the very high water did not arrive. The high water flushed much of the snow from the streets and Tuesday brought a dry day to San Marco. The closing day ceremonies included the crowning of “La Marie” by the “Doge” of Venice, as shown below, followed by the flight of the Lion of Venice (the flag of the Republic of Venice).

La Marie is crowned

A tradition in Venice, Casanova presides

                    One of the winners of the contest – took 5 months to make

With the crowd singing the anthem of the Republic of Venice “La Serenissima”, an emotional scene for all Venetians, their proud flag is hosted to the top of the bell tower. At this moment, despite the costumes, you knew immediately which ones were Venetians as they sang.

The official close of the Carnival is the silence gondola parade from Rialto to San Marco and the giant bonfire which marks the end of the Plague.
….And now everyone begins planning for 2014 which ends on 4 March 2014.
……..See you there!

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Snow & High Water

The Snow was a present for me as I absolutely love this magnificant city under a white blanket of snow. It began early in the day and continued until late afternoon. At first it was not sticking and we were trying to make pictures of the flakes, afraid it would not stay. Enjoy these and we’ll post them all when we have better access to internet.

 Gondole in San Marco with snow.

Small square in Snow, Carnival 2013 Venezia

A small campo near the church Miracoli in Venice Itay.

A small street in Murano in the snow.

The beautiful chiesa, church, San Donato, Murano Italy.Watch for more pictures.
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New Faceted Twists

We previewed these faceted Murano glass twist beads in a post on Facebook a few months back and they have finally arrived! Available in both multi-colored with 24kt gold foil accents as well as in single, transparent colors. The approximate size is 21.5mm across and 7mm thick.

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New Venetian Colors & Shapes

It sounds terribly romantic to travel to Venice and mostly like in your vision (and wishfully, in mine) have a glass of Veneto wine while we gaze at an array of dazzling Venetian Beads. Reality Check!

The new beads you see arriving at Venetian Bead Shop don’t have that romantic origin. For us, it begins with a color palette, sometimes a request from a customer, a need of our own jewelry for complimentary beads. Then, it’s a scouring through the Effetre cane colors and a trial with the foils, silver foil, gold foil and white gold. The Spring 2013 beads began with our trip to Venice in October, a trip to Effetre, a trip to the tool makers of Murano and samples to be sure we can produce. NEW COLORS:These new colors are the result of working with our good beadmakers in Venice to invent new colors to match the 2013 Spring Colors. Shortly we will have rounds in these colors in most sizes, followed by discs and you tell us what next.  NEW SHAPES:

 

The new shapes we are launching took an even longer time. In 2009 we bought tools from an American tool maker and 8 pounds of metal we carried to Venice. No one wanted to try them. They didn’t look like the tools the Venetians use. SO, we brought them home. We carried them back in 2010.  Again, no one was interested. So, we brought them home again. In October of 2012, we carried them back once again and wonders of wonders, with the help of a Muranese tool maker, we turned them into the kind of molds that they use to work and now everyone loves them!

Fortunately, we are long in patience and tenacity. And with the help of our good friends in Venice, we began working with the new tools.  At this point, we have enlisted the help of the American tool makers to adapt their molds for our production. Our beads, as beautiful as they are, must be made in production, so the tools must be comfortable, efficient, guide themselves.  It’s been a journey of discovery, and that after 20 years, there are still new things to learn about making Venetian Beads. As for the American tool maker, I believe he enjoyed it as well. A new trick!

 And after making samples – some we like, some we must remake, we have the beginnings of a new line which we hope ou will like. Take a look at these new shapes and the colors below. Let us know which ones you like as well as which colors you prefer.

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Love Locks – Venice

It’s official name is the Ponte dell’Accademia and in addition to being one of the most photographed bridges, it is also a very useful crossing along the Grand Canal. It connects Dorosoduro Sestiere to San Marco Sestiere and makes a great shortcut into the historic center. The yellow building in the background is the Palazzo Cavalli-Franchetti and today is the home of the Institute of Science, Letters & Art.romantic cities in the world.Read our BlogVenice to learn more 

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