Venetian Beads - Venetian Bead Shop Blog

Making Millefiori Beads

No Two Alike
When we say “No two ever exactly alike”, here’s why.

This is a typical selection of assorted slices of Millefiori. While it is possible to buy only one type of cane, most of our Millefiori beads have a random selection of these.

Our beadmakers buy presliced canes (for the most part) from Effetre, the factory in Murano which produces the COE104 Glass Canes used to produce our beads.

In the picture below you see the classic Millefiori Pendant which is made by placing a single layer of these slices in a form where they are fused. After fusing, they are polished and inset into Silver or Vermeil Bails. This is a very popular item found all over Venice, and on our website as well.

SOLD BY THE KILO:
To make the bags of slices, they take canes in stock and chop them into the little slices. So you may have 100+ pounds of slices. They are chopped and dumped into wheelbarrows and measured our in bags by the kilo. So when our bead makers go they just buy a in small quantities the millefiori slices. Lampworkers use the slices of Millefiori for the eyes in their animals.

PEEK AT THE FACTORY WAREHOUSE:
On the right is a scene from inside the Effetre Factory Warehouse. This warehouse is closed to the public, to the trade and to almost everyone. Sometimes we get to sneak in with a bead maker.

SORTED FOR FUSING:
The vases on the left came from a single cane and we used these in fusing or making many of the “Lace” beads where each one has the same slices.

To make some of our cross pendants, we have to wait for the millefiori to be available in all the sizes we need as we use graduated sizes of the same “Margherita” cane.

Depending on when you buy the bags, it has slices from the canes they have in stock. There is no set recipe of 2 of this, or 4 of that. It is just what canes are in stock and depends on the whim of the worker slicing the beads. It also depends on the schedule of production of canes, so some may be made only once a year. Or certainly not until they have sold all in stock and have orders for the 250-300 Chili that are produced in a run.

KLIMT – USES THE BROKEN
One of our most popular collections of Murano Glass Beads doesn’t use the whole pieces, this design is made from the fragments. Imagine how happy Effetre is that even the broken bits of glass can be sold.

So as you can see, we can never tell you which ones will be in a bead or batch. It’s part of the fun!

To watch our beadmaker use the canes in making our beads, view our youtube video
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Pastry and Coffee Spots in Venice

Here’s a list if some if my favorite places in Venice. While Venice is not a large city, there are numerous small Pasticceria around the six sestieri (six zones). As I am usually there to work, my selections come from the area where we rent an appartment and my path to Murano.
Il Cafe Florian:
The Oldest Coffee Shop in Italy stands in Piazza San Marco. It opened in 1720 by Florian Francescone.

It is expensive, but one of the great places to enjoy the history and scenery. Lord Byron, Marcel Proust, Charles Dickens and Casanova all have enjoyed the service at this great cafe. Don’t worry the menu is in multiple languages.

Rosa Salva:
Not only is Rosa Salva a great pastry shop/small caffe, they also send their tasty breakfast rolls throughout Venice and Murano to the many bars and restaurants. They have 3 locations by their own name in Venice: San Marco, Calle Fiubera which is the headquarters; San Marco, Mercerie (near Rialto) and Campo San Giovanni e Paolo, near the hospital and Fondamenta Nove. They are known also for their wedding cake production and their fritelle (in Carnival Season). The picture is of the main location.

Tonolo:
One of the busiest shops in all of Venice. It is situated in the heart of the city and among the absolute best for fritelle. It is in Dorodura , # 3764 near the Friar church.

Here you must learn the art of sliding through the crowd, recognizing when you are being asked what you want, and when served. It is standing room only most of the time.

Pasticceria Dal Mas: It is near the train station on Lista de Spagna, and for me is the #1 for Fritelle. It has no sitting room, but the pastry and coffee is superb. It is a great place for a quick breakfast (colazione). And it’s strategic location makes it on my morning stops as it is near the boatstops, the train station and Piazzale Roma and for a quick afternoon macchiato.

Below are some terms you’l need and some rules to consider: 1) Pasticceria – where pastries are made – sometimes they also serve coffee
2) Paneficio – a bakery for bread, not to be confused with pastry.
3) Cioccolateria production of chocolate and candies. 4) Bar – Unlike other parts of the world, it’s the hub of society. For breakfast, snacks, afternoon coffee, and late night respite.
5) Al Banco or Alla Tavola – There are 2 prices, one for standing at the bar and the second for sitting and being served. (Read Below the Rules on Standing)

HOW TO ORDER:
One Cappuccino: un cappuccino
Two Cappuccino: due cappuccini
Latte: Caffe Latte
Cup of Coffee: Caffe Americano
Expresso: Un caffe
Fruit Juice: Succo di (whatever you want, arancia is orange juice)
A glass of cold/warm milk: Un bicchiere di latto freddo/caldo

RULES:
Drinking or Sipping. If you want to leisurely sip your coffee chat with your friends then you had best sit at a table (providing there is one). The counter is reserved for the quick espresso. Note that the Venetians who come in appear to be on the way to a urgent meeting and apparently they are already late.

Paying the Cashier: When you enter a shop, look around quickly. If you see the sign “Cassa” with a person manning this position, then you must order with this person, who yells over to the barista, pay and then proceed to the bar for your drink.

Backpacks: Take them off or you will land someones espresso on them, their friends making them even later for their important meeting and receive very stern looks if not a string of Italian which your phrase book never mentioned.

Tolerance & Respect: In the last couple of years the cruise ships and tours have increased the number of tourist arriving daily to the city which has had a direct correlation to the decrease in tolerance by locals to what they perceive as rude inappropriate behavior and disrespect to the people who call Venice home and their beloved city.

This is just a short list of the hundreds of great places all around the city to get your coffee. The Bars have hot pastry early in the morning. But you must arrive early to get the best choices. They have small ovens and the pastry is delivered to them where they bake it and serve it to the Venetians who pop in for coffee. If you have a favorite one, send us your suggestions and questions.

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How the Nuvola Murano Glass Bead is Made

This popular Venetian Bead is one of the first beads a bead maker is taught after they learn to make the aventurine beads. The process is similar but with white frit instead of aventurine. The heart made here begins with an aima (body) of clear Murano Glass and is then rolled into a bowl of white roughly ground Murano Glass (frit). As you can see here this heart begins as a gum drop shape which is then formed into the heart using the tools. The tools required to make this bead are few and the technique simple.

The small anima is rolled in the rough frit to give it the “clouds” appearance. A transparent color of Murano Glass encases the clouds.

It’s also easy here to see how the base bead could be formed into many different shapes.Google

How the Nuvola Murano Glass Bead is Made

The small anima is rolled in the rough frit to give it the “clouds” appearance. A transparent color of Murano Glass encases the clouds.

It’s also easy here to see how the base bead could be formed into many different shapes.Google

Murano Glass Bead Colors Overload

The beginnings of almost every bead begins with a sfere (round). From there the decorations are added.
The colors of Venice are so vibrant that it is easy here to go overboard. Every window is filled with the bright colors of the 24kt gold foil and necklaces heavy laden with Murano Glass Beads. the pendants are enormous. It is natural, they sell what they make.
If you go to Florence you find a concentration of gold jewelry on the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno river.
We have been working for sometime here in Venice. Part of every trip is window shopping for inspiration. It is always good to see that someone else here in Venice has a similar approach. Imagine our surprise when we saw similar beads to our new Sfumatura shades in the windows in San Marco, well I guess it is just confirmation that we have a good idea.

We went a bit overboard on these colors. You can see that we tried multiple colors and different sizes of decoration.
We think they are all great, and difficult to choose. But we think the ones with Vinace (a deep purple) are the best. And we will have in the lentil, disc as shown, as well as rounds in several sizes.
Later we will post pictures of new great mosaics we are designing. These we will use in our pendants and larger focal beads.

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Murano Glass Beads: New Designs

We are working on new color designs for the winter and spring. Somewhere in the design process we were inspired to design around the new Swarovski Blends, and as we began playing with the colors and shapes, an entire line began to form in our minds.And we just began to play with colors. What you see here are our initial designs, the final shapes are still in process. We knew that we wanted some organic shapes. Now we are also working on Murano Glass Bead rondelles which will match these, as we invision necklaces, bracelets and earrings. There are many more designs underway and we will be posting more. So tell us what you think about these. We began only with the natural colors of the glass, but decided to try some with silver and gold. Take a look at the Swarovski Blends to see how you can use these together. We named them Sfumatura which means “Shades” in English because the colors melt into clear and to the second color. We hope you’ll like these Murano Glass Beads in almost watercolor shades. Tell us what you think and which ones you like. Do you like the gold and center foil in the center or just the bicolors. Google

Chevron Murano Glass Beads

The birth of the Rosetta cane which is used to produce Chevrons owes its creation to a 14th century woman. The daughter of an even then famed Murano Glass Blower and furnace owner, Angelo Barovier. This is a family line which continues today in Murano. Maria Barovier was given an order of the Doge on 2 July 1487 granting her the right to produce these beads. The canes of course were produced in the furnace, but she began the cutting, grinding and finally polishing the beads. It is remarkable that the Venetian Republic recognized and supported women in this industry in the 15th Century. This, in fact, set the tone for the industry which became by and large a women’s job. Her secret was in part, heating over a fire using a padellla (frying pan) to restore the lustre to the beads, but the colors of the beads and the beauty as today, come from the production of the glass canes. So just how is the bead made?It all starts in the furnace with the blowers who produce a bubble in a bullet shape molten glass. The bubble is essential as the hollow space inside becomes the hole. This was a ingenious way to produce beads which could be strung, long before bead release was invented or before lampwork was in existence. Once the blower had the bubble, he then added a second layer of a different color which he then placed into a mould, which gives you the “stars” of the rosetta cane. The glass maker could add continuous layers of colors. It was then up to the beadmaker to grind away the outer layers of color to reveal as much or as little of the interior colors. The example above has 6 layers, and trade beads are discussed in the number of layers they have. Obviously the more layers, the more difficult both for the production of the Rosetta cane as well as for the grinding and polishing and therefore more expensive. In the centuries after this pioneer, the tonnage of chevrons, or African Trade Beads as they became known, which were shipped is unimaginable. They were also shipped to the US in the 15th through the 19th centuries to trade with the American native Indians. The rich bold colors used were created specifically for each market. Many red, white and blue came to the US, while the bolder greens, yellows often went to the African market as they were designed around tribal colors. It is not unusual today to see necklaces of this vintage worn in official ceremonies. View our collection available on line Murano Glass Chevron Beads.We have a limited supply as the canes from the earlier productions are diminishing each day. Using this same technique, our master of Murano Glass Blown beads fuses together millefiori canes, rolls them on a blow pipe and blows them. Then he carefully grinds this hollow beads to reveal the colors underneath. Today they are still widely collected, sold at bead shows and online. We are pleased to present the collection from Claudio. Reference: Perle di Vetro Veneziane, Una Lunga e Affascinante Storia, Giacomo De Carlo, 2013 Published in Venice. Google

Murano Glass Dichroic Beads

We took dichroic glass back to Venice after we discovered American bead makers using it and saw the beauty in this new decoration. Fortunately, Jerry Sandberg had begun working on dichroic for artist since the 1970s. He was working at a vacuum-coating laboratory in southern California 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. 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. (So much for that.) 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. 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. 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

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.

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.

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