Explore a beautiful very rare antique elbow millefiori mosaic bead from Venice, dating back to the early 1900s and featured in Picard’s Volume VI (p.35, bead 567). This remarkable Venetian trade bead holds a unique place in history, crafted with intricate mosaic artistry and traded across Africa.
Size: 30 x 9 mm
Condition: Excellent, with no visible chips or cracks
This exquisite bead exemplifies the mastery of Venetian glass artisans, who crafted millefiori Italian for "a thousand flowers" beads using layers of colored glass arranged to form intricate floral patterns. Venetian beadmakers innovated this technique, where each bead is meticulously shaped and polished to achieve its unique mosaic design. In the African trade, millefiori beads became symbols of wealth and status, especially in regions like Ghana, where they were treasured and integrated into local culture.
