Antique Venetian wedding cake Fiorato glass white and multi-coloured hand made beaded choker necklace, a really old piece with signs of age

Antique wedding cake bead necklace with handmade white glass beads, each decorated with yellow, gold, orange, pink, red and blue glass decorations. This is a lovely example of the very old handcrafted beads from early in the tradition of their being crafted. Each bead has been decorated slightly differently and their being hand crafted is very clear.

The beads are securely strung with unusual marbled blue glass spacer beads and silver tone filigree bead caps. The necklace has a length of about 17 inches and securely fastens with an antique gold tone spring ring clasp.

The necklace is in reasonable vintage condition given its age. There are minor losses to small parts of the delicate glass embellishments as I've tried to show with close-up pictures.

Wedding cake beads known as Fiorato (decorated with glass overlays featuring roses, swirls and dots) and Venetian foil beads (with fusion of colour, gold and silver foil) are two of the kinds of beads made using the lamp-work method.

The lamp-work method is the most time-consuming method of glass bead-making, as each bead must be formed individually. Using a torch for heat, Murano glass rods and tubes are heated to a molten state and wrapped around a metal rod until the desired shape is achieved. Several layers of different coloured glass, as well as gold and silver leaf, are used to produce the desired effect. After the bead is slowly cooled, it is removed from the rod, resulting in a hole for eventual stringing as jewellery.