Francis Greil, Venice. Venice (together with Holland, Moravia and Bohemia) was the site of the most renowned European glass bead making centres and Venetian glassmakers dominated the world market in volume, quality and diversity until the twentieth century.
Drawn glass beads like these were typical of Venetian and Murano beads and drawn canes with a central hole allowed for production of great numbers of identical beads in a short time. The production technique was unchanged for centuries and consisted of a hollow globe of molten glass being attached to two metal plates with rods. Two men, each holding one of the rods, ran quickly in opposite directions, drawing out a tube of glass at least three hundred feet long. The original bubble of air remained as a tunnel running the entire length of the tube. The tube was then cut into canes, the canes were made into beads and the beads finished by reheating techniques or by lapidary methods. Venetian shipments of beads to the United States alone amounted to six million pounds of beads a year in the 1880s.
These are said to have been used by Isabella Parkes.
Isabella Parkes daughter Mary is the mother of the donor.
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