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GLASS BEADS
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The simplest glass beads are the "conterie", small rounded or sharp-edged beads obtained by sectioning the hollow rods pulled in the furnace to a length of dozens of meters: they are appreciated for their bright colors and brilliance.
Venetian craftswomen, the "Perlere" - because they are mostly women, concentrate the best of their manual skill on the "lamp-work" bead. A solid vitreous rod, also pulled by hand in the furnace, is softened by the heat of the fire from a gas-fired torch. The perlera wraps the rod around a thin metal tube, giving the bead its desired shape and decorating it with polychrome glass.
There are three major types of lampwork bead: the sommersa bead, the millefiori bead, and the bead decorated with vette. |
| The sommerso bead derives its beauty from the overlay of two different colored glass layers, obtained by using different rods, and often including gold or silver leaf. The millefiori bead is decorated around its surface with sections of millefiori rod embedded into a central nucleus and compacted by the heat of the fire. The bead decorated with vette is literally "painted" on the surface under the heat of the fire by the skilled hands of the perlera, who uses vette, fine glass threads, obtained by pulling hot rods of colored glass or avventurina, generally patterned into floral motifs. There are infinite variations of these techniques; for example one can use rods of filigrana or the bead may be finished by grinding or cutting to obtain sharp edges. |
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The finished object is then immersed into acid which melts the thin metal tube on the inside without hurting the bead, so that it comes out pierced through.The technique is very ancient and probably dates back to the Renaissance. The shapes and decorations have been constantly reinvented over the centuries as time and again they adapt to the extravagances of fashion. There are however types which prove timeless, like the "ethnic" millefiori beads which long ago were made for exportation to the far off colonie |
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