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Millefiori Murano glass pendants were first introduced sometime during the 19th century, but they draw their origins from a technique that was available long before this period. The staple technology of creating concentric circle patterns had been around ever since ancient times, with the credit for inventing it being attributed to the Romans. Much later, during the Renaissance period of Murano glassmaking, master glassmakers on the Island of Murano refined this technology, adapting it to the production of not only Millefiori Murano glass pendants, but also other jewelry items and various decorative objects. Most of the techniques of Murano glass working involve manually handling bundles of liquefied glass mounted on metal rods. The old ways of working the glass were very ingenious, with the artisans molding bundles of colored glass into the shape of canes, which they then immersed into molten glasses of various colors, to create multiple superimposed layers. When sliced, each segment of the cane would display its own pattern of multicolor concentric circles, allowing the artisan to achieve innovative decorative effects by slicing the glass canes into disks and blending these with various Murano glass items. The glass canes molded into shape by artisans are known as Murrine, a technique believed to have been acquired by the Venetians from Byzantine glassmakers soon after the fall of Constantinople. By the end of the 15th century, Marietta Barovier, daughter of a famous glass artisan and illustrious personality of the time, introduced a method that allowed the creation of symmetrical star patterns. It consisted in pouring the molten glass into a metallic mold to give it a cylindrical shape, transferring the glass cylinder into a tubular mold containing glass powder of different colors, and then inserting the mixture into the furnace. The result would be a smooth glass cylinder with a decorative star pattern implanted in the center. Around the 15th century, the Murrine technique was often being employed to create ornamental spheres, intricately decorated walking canes and glass pearls. Later, the same technique would be used to create the popular Millefiori Murano Glass Pendants. The word Millefiori translates from Italian as “a thousand flowers”, and during the golden age of Murano glassmaking, it would be on the lips of everyone, both inside and beyond Italian borders. The process of manufacturing Millefiori Murano glass pendants involves cutting thin slices of Murrine glass canes and aligning them in a circular fashion in a mold. The mold is then filled with glass powder and the design is heated at high temperature in the furnace until the content of the mold is fused into a single piece. A similar array of techniques is used for producing other Millefiori jewelry pieces such as earrings. Although the molds used for shaping Millefiori Murano glass jewelry are rarely changed, each resulting design is one-of-a-kind. Thanks to the abundance of color combinations, the different numbers of layers used, as well as the varying consistency of molten glass, each Murrine comes with its unique characteristics. Moreover, the endless design possibilities that can result from using the Millefiori technique further ensures that no two finished pieces are ever alike.
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Murano, glass, pendant,
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