Millefiori Square Beads
Millefiori Square Beads
Millefiori is a glasswork technique which produces distinctive decorative patterns on glassware.
Apsley Pellatt (in his book Curiosities of Glass Making) was the first to use the term "millefiori", which appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1849.
The term millefiori is a combination of the Italian words "mille" (thousand) and "fiori" (flowers).
The beads were called mosaic beads before then. While the use of this technique long precedes the term "millefiori", it is now frequently associated with Venetian glassware.