Handmade Venetian Glass Beads

Venetian glass is a type of glass object made in Venice, Italy, primarily on the island of Murano. It is world-renowned for being colorful, elaborate, and skillfully made.

Many of the important characteristics of these objects had been developed by the thirteenth century. Toward the end of that century, the center of the Venetian glass industry moved to Murano.

Byzantine craftsmen played an important role in the development of Venetian glass, an art form for which the city is well-known. When Constantinople was sacked by the Fourth Crusade in 1204, some fleeing artisans came to Venice. This happened again when the Ottomans took Constantinople in 1453, supplying Venice with still more glassworkers. By the sixteenth century, Venetian artisans had gained even greater control over the color and transparency of their glass, and had mastered a variety of decorative techniques.

Our Venetian Glass Beads:
All of our Venetian Glass Beads are Genuine and handmade in Venice and the Island of Murano. Venetian Glass Beads are among the most recognized and collected beads in the world. Add tremendous value to your handmade work by using quality Italian made beads to any piece of your wire jewelry.

How are they made?

Color:
The process of Murano bead-making begins with the production of color canes. The chemical compounds involved in color fabrication are extremely sensitive so they must be mixed with absolute accuracy. Aquamarine is created through the use of copper and cobalt and ruby red is achieved through the use of a gold solution as a coloring agent.

Lampworked, Perle a Lume Venetian beads:
Most Murano beads are made using an air pump burner lampworking or torch and mandrel technique, once the mandrel was made by using an iron rod covered with a release material stuck on the top of the rod, now a copper tube has taken its place.The copper tube helps make many other different shapes.

The lamp-work method is the most time consuming method of glass bead-making. As each bead must be formed individually. Using a torch for heat, Murano glass rods and tubes are heated to a molten state and wrapped around a metal rod until the desired shape is achieved. Several layers of different colored glass as well as gold and silver leaf are used to produce the desired effect. After the bead is slowly cooled, it is removed from the rod which produces a hole for eventual stringing.

Wedding cake beads “Fiorato”(decorated with glass overlays featuring roses, swirls and dots) and Venetian foil beads (with their fusion of color, gold and silver foil) are just two of the kinds of beads made using the lamp-work method.