Millefiori Beads

Millefiori Beads for jewellery making Australia.

Millefiori Beads – (Italian: [milleˈfjoːri]) is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware. The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words “mille” (thousand) and “Fiori” (flowers).

Since the late 1980s, the millefiori technique has been applied to polymer clay and other materials. As the polymer clay is quite pliable and does not need to be heated and reheated to fuse it, it is a much easier medium in which to produce millefiori patterns than glass.

The manufacture of mosaic beads can be traced to Ancient Roman, Phoenician and Alexandrian times. Canes, probably made in Italy, have been found as far away as 8th-century archaeological sites in Ireland. Millefiori beads have been uncovered from digs at Sandby borg, Öland, Sweden, dating apparently from the late 5th or early 6th century. A piece of millefiori was found, along with unworked garnets, in a purse at the early 7th-century Anglo-Saxon burial site at Sutton Hoo UK.