(3189) Largest ever antique wedding cake glass beads.Venice or Murano.

Description

We will leave to Gianni Moretti,in his book “A century of venetian beads”the burden to explain this type of beads:
“A particularly difficult bead to produce is the fiorata con vette d’ oro ( The flower bead -commonly called wedding cake-with gold vette).The worker begins by pulling the vette(thin filament of crystal  glass) of a thickness of one millimeter.Then an extremely delicate sheet,10 cmx10cm,of gold leaf is placed on a leather cushion and cut into forty strips each 2.5 mm wide.At this point,the crystal vetta is simply wetted with saliva,and the fine strip of gold placed on it.With this vetta,of no more than 9 or 10 cm,it is possible to decorate the bead.This kind of bead is extremely delicate,and inevitably deteriorate with time and use as friction between the bead and the skin or cloth causes the gold leaf to rub off.In old beads only small quantities of gold leaf remain” ( page 52/ 53).
The 5 beads we offer on sale are the biggest of this type we ever found.But,as was predictable,the decoration on them has suffered over the years.See pics.They can be dated late 19th/early  20th  century.
Do not confuse this type of work with the “ fiorate” done with aventurine glass:a much easier  and resistant  type of wedding cake,but with less appeal.
”
Diameter:28 to 3o mm
Hole to hole:26 to 28 mm
Total weight:175 grms
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