Indian Glass Bead Round Millefiori and Roses Mix 2 Pack | Pack of 10

Indian Glass Kiln Beads offer a distinctive handmade aesthetic. These 10mm round millefiori (meaning "a thousand flowers" in Italian) beads are copies of the famous Venetian glass ones. The design reached significant technical and aesthetic heights in Venice, Italy, during the late 1800s and early 1900s. These distinctive, colourful patterns were handmade by artisans using labour-intensive glasswork techniques. While the manufacture of similar mosaic beads can be traced back to Ancient Roman, Phoenician, and Alexandrian times, the foundational ability to create glass itself originated over 5,000 years ago in Egypt and Mesopotamia.

The beads are made today using the same techniques perfected centuries ago, by bundling coloured glass rods, heating them, pulling them into thin canes, and then slicing cross-sections to reveal intricate floral or geometric motifs. The beads feature rich, solid background colours—such as brick red, cobalt blue, black, or white—which allow the vibrant surface flowers to stand out. Because each cane slice is applied by hand onto a core glass base, no two beads feature the exact same floral arrangement.

Roses: 'floating' within the clear transparent glass. The roses are made by dotting glass and then drawing a tool through the blob of glass to make the pretty floral pattern. It takes a 'master' of beadmaking to make these all look the same!

Lace makers worldwide use beads like these to weight their wooden bobbins, as well as to make their sets of bobbins pretty.  It's kind of a lace maker addiction!  If you know a lace maker, these make a wonderful gift to add to their stash.

To create the surface treatment, the glass is heated with a flame torch and carefully applied to a mandrel to form the bead shape. This process requires a high level of skill to ensure the bead retains its structure. During production, as the bead cools, the exterior shrinks while the interior remains hot and expanded, which can cause cracking. To prevent this, beads are annealed in a kiln where the temperature is slowly reduced, making the final product stronger and more resistant to breaking.

Indian glass beads often arrive with a dusty white or grey coating. This material is called "kiln wash" or "slip," which is used to help the bead release from the wire during production. You can easily remove it by rinsing the beads with tepid water or wiping them with a cloth.

Shape: Round
Size: 10mm with large hole
Colour: asst colours and millefiori and rose styles x10 in one packet