M is for millefiori, meaning “a thousand flowers” in Italian. These little beads never fail to delight with their flowers, cogs, bullseyes and geometrics. Watch the video below to see the process of molding the glass canes, and the amazing stretching they go through, before being sliced into the pieces that I use in my mosaics. I just finished these fun brooches, with my latest order of new millefiori.
Here’s a video of the process of pulling the canes of glass to make millefiori.
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Nice choice for the letter M, I’ve always found millefiori to be fascinating. Awhile back I watched it being made on a TV show – How it’s made I think.
Wow! That was fascinating! Thank you for posting it. By the way, I am amazed that none of them were wearing gloves.
Wow! That process is just amazing! It is so fascinating for me to learn where things come from and to see all the multi-step processes our products go through! Thank you so much for sharing this! And your work is beautiful! Just beautiful!
I had a friend in TX who did mosaics and I just love all the colors and the beautiful designs that come together. I’ve been here before and I just really think you do beautiful work!!!
-CK
I love using millfiori on my enameling! Once I did a series of fish, and I used milfiori to make their eyes. The result was great!
I can’t wait to start enameling again. I have various designs in my sketch book, and some of them include millfiori.
I also used in my jewelery, specially to make earrings, and they sell like hoy buns!
Love the way you used them. Your pieces are so beautiful. And the process of making this little beautys is fantastic.
Fascinating. Sort of like a taffy pull! I’ve patterned afghans after the design of the paperweights, but I never knew how the mosaic affect was achieved, even though I visited glass blowers while in Girl Scouts. Of course, the blowers weren’t making millefiori…
I’m glad this video was such a hit–I found it fascinating, especially the stretching part! Noemi–fish with millefiori eyes sound so cool!