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| The bead-making industry in Italy is ancient, dating from the times of the Roman Empire. It was and still is centered on the island of Murano near Venice. Millions of kilos of beads have been exported annually for centuries, born from factories with highly organized specialized-labor forces and also from hundreds of individuals in Venice who were part of the huge cottage industry making the larger "lamp-worked" fancy beads. Both these traditions endure today; some of the best and most innovative glass artists in the world are found in the art-glass workshops in Murano. |
| The Societa Veneziana Conterie was a bead-making company in Murano originally chartered in 1889. It was a consortium of 16 bead-making families that eventually closed its doors in 1992, when it sold out its entire stock which had been accumulating for nearly a century. |
| Prairie Edge acquired the largest bulk of Societa Veneziana stock, representing hundreds of thousands of kilos in an enormous variety of sizes, glass types, and finishes. Many of the beads were made for the more contemporary twentieth-century market, but some are the old hand-drawn beads with colors used in the North American trade with Native American peoples. The colors of Venetian beads are amazing. . . many of the beads have soft, sweet gradations of colors that cannot be duplicated today, and the variety of sizes is especially noticeable in the smallness of some of the beads (18° - 20° - 22°). Because of the hand-labor involved in older styles of fabrication, unchanged for centuries, the Italian beads have a charming, inimitable irregularity of lenticular shape and some have a pleasingly mottled surface finish. These tell-tale qualities of shape and colour are exactly what one sees today on older Native American beaded art found in museums and selected galleries. |
| Please note: Italian beads are sized differently from Czech beads (which is the current norm for sizing standards). One Italian 4°, for example, is between a Czech 11° - 12°. We have overlaid a Czech sizing system on the Italian beads with some measure of success, but in fact the sizes do vary. . . they tend to run large from the named size. |
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| Czech Republic Beads |
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| Smaller Beads |
Seed Beads
Are the small, rounded beads available in many sizes and finishes that are generally used for beadwork embroidery, but also are strung together for a meshed effect in some jewelry. |
Bugle Beads
Are the thin tubular beads with sharply cut edges also used for embroidery. Lengths and finishes vary and the beads may be straight or twisted. Extra long bugles are usually used as fringe and as dangles in jewelry. |
| Larger Beads |
Tile Beads
Are a generally inexpensive cylindrical, tubular bead available in one size (approximately 6mm). |
Pony Beads
Are rounded beads in a few sizes - 2°, 5°, 6°, and 8°. They look like a much bigger seed bead and come with a variety of finishes as well. |
Crow Beads
Are rounded- thick-walled beads approximately 9mm in diameter. |
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| Contemporary Beads |
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| Wow, is all we can say! The variety of beads currently available and the ingenuity, creativity, and skill of the artists combine to offer a truly staggering array of choice. Dichroic glass is a deeply coloured, almost fluorescent material originally designed for industrial use by NASA for their space program, and has filtered down to glass artisans everywhere. It works up beautifully into beads. The glass workshops on Murano, Italy, still create handblown beads of timeless design. Some beadmakers create mini-sculptures whose design, through intricately small, shares a monolithic presence with large sculptural pieces. This area of our collection is the least static and is constantly changing to showcase new material. |
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| Vintage Beads |
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| "Vintage" is a broad term, covering both genuine antiques as well as more recent "retro" items that may have a "kitsch" value. We offer several choices along the spectrum. Occasionally available are art deco-era beads from the 1920's and the decades following that period as well as some "novelty" beads from the 1950's to 1960's. These beads are Czech, German, Japanese, and French and are marketed in extremely limited quantities. |
| The red and yellow white-heart beads are Italian and stand alone as uniquely desirable collectibles in the bead world. The minerals required to produce a red glass are the most expensive and the early bead makers coated a white glass core with red glass in order to produce a less costly bead. These reds and yellows have an inimitable glow from the under coat of white, akin to a tinted glaze over a base coat of white paint. The smaller embroidery sizes are especially valuable. |
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| Vintage Italian Beads |
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The biggest selection of Vintage beads we have are the "old-stock" Italian beads. As mentioned in the Italian bead introduction, many of these are the old "greasy" or translucent colors found on antique Native American beaded art in museums and galleries. These are NOT reproductions - they are the real thing.
There are several good blue colors in the Opaque section of the Italian beads, and the translucent and Opaline sections are nearly all old-stock beads. We do not have a full colour range in the "extra-small" beads - there are no blues, except for a nearly-black dark blue and also there are no reds. |
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