Millefiori - Tumblr Posts

Pearl

Millefiori/ Mosaic bead from a rich grave dated to the older iron age. located in Nannestad, Viken county, Noway.

Photo by Ulla Schildt KHM Kulturhistorisk museum Object C10473 (unimus)

Maybe at some point in your life you've seen a Venetian glass necklace that looked like this:

This one I bought when I was eleven or so, for about one zillion Lire, or twelve dollars. The black base beads are decorated with what's known as millefiori, "thousand flowers". These are chips of glass canes (rods) where the glass has been built up so that the design shows from the end of the rod when it's cut. The more general term for this, that isn't all flowery, is murrine. The Venetians, and long before them the Romans, are pretty much world champs at commercializing the process.

The Romans really went buckwild.

(I think that's Jayne Cobb...)

The Vikings were familiar with the Roman process and traded in Roman beads, but especially as time passed, those were very rare and expensive. So Norse sites tend to have more locally made, simpler murrine, with concentric circles and stripes. Like so:

(reproductions by me)

So I've been making that kind of murrine for years now. Really it's not much harder than pulling twisties and other relatively basic techniques.

But this is the first time I've done a murrine with shaped internal elements, so I photographed the process to share. If you're interested and want to see more, I used the video tutorial on YouTube created by the excellent Ann Wierbinski.

First, you build up a big blob of glass on the end of a steel rod, and shape it into a cylinder. I didn't think to photograph that bit, sorry. The glass I used is actually a bright red, but reds are black when hot. Then I encased the bright red with a darker red--that is, made a layer of darker red all around the bright red barrel--for a little more depth and contrast. Then I heated one side only, until I could shape it into a point, and then let it set up again. Then I heated only the other side of the cylinder until I could push in a crease. So at this point, we have--

A heart. A little more than an inch long, a little less than an inch wide. It was actually quite easy. Or maybe I'm very good.

But glass always wants to be round. And in order to draw this out to a cane, you have to melt it completely. So, you make it round. Slowly, filling in the gaps first, you build up glass around the heart until it's round.

You also draw the edges of the new glass up over the end of the heart a bit, so that your design will go all the way down the cane. So at this point the heart is slightly obscured, but it'll all work out.

Add some stripes because why not.

The next bit is a bit funny, but you use some clear glass to make your design a little pointy hat.

It's very blobby, because this is ultimately waste glass and doesn't become part of the final product. It helps the glass pull out evenly so that the design runs all the way through the cane.

Then you attach another punty (metal stick for holding hot glass) to the side with the clear hat, pop off the first punty, and put a hat on that side. Once that's done, you re-attach the punty and you have--oh hell hang on too many images--