Yellow water melon beads from Venice

Venetian aventurine or watermelon necklace (origin: Koforidua, Ghana)

Those who know about these topics call aventurine a type of bead with a lamp-cast enamel that owes its name to a certain Vincenzo Miotti, a Venetian glassmaker who lived in the first half of the 17th century. These are beads with a longitudinal stripe very much to the taste of future African clients that were made with oil lamps (lampwork) in thousands of small workshops in Murano. The simplicity of a technique that allowed notable quantities of beads to be produced at a limited cost was undoubtedly the secret of its enormous success throughout the 18th century and the first half of the 19th century.

However, the development of Prosser techniques, mechanization and competition from northern Bohemia forced the Venetian workshops to change their strategy. In the last decades of the 19th century, tasks were simplified, reducing the number of models destined for the African market, but maintaining the quality of the handmade product. It was from then on that those beads that are now known as watermelons or melons simply (due to their resemblance to those watermelons called crimson sweet), began to be manufactured en masse.

The necklace we offer is a string of 66 aventurine or watermelon beads (12-14 mm in length, and 7-9 mm Ø), of which 34 are bicolor yellow-brown, 8 are tricolor white-green-brown, and the rest have red wine, white, black and yellow stripes.

Weight: 110g