What is Murini and millefiori glass?
Millefiori is an Italian word meaning “thousand flowers.” Although the process was developed much earlier in Egypt, it is now most identified with a glass making technique in Venice where hot layers of hot glass were laid over-around each other to create an image, then stretched into long rods (the image might be flowerlike, concentric circles, etc.). These rods were then cut into one-foot lengths called millefiori rods. From these one-foot lengths, very short lengths were cut and laid next to each other in a contained shape or around a bead base, for example, and then remelted together to create a finished item called a “murrina” (after Murano, an island in the city of Venice). Additional information can be found here.
