Previous Exhibit of
The Unfinished Symphony, Part One

Welcome to our third exhibit. This one is dedicated to millefiori made with composite murrine. These are our favorite ones which were made in small scale by private artisans in their homes, studios, or as cottage industry. We are calling it the unfinished symphony or fireworks, since it is practically impossible to know how many different variations over the years had been made. Their number is limited only to the creative imagination of the artists, and new ones keep popping up here and there. We thought we might get a good start at classifying and dividing them by their center color, followed by the ones with a design center or no defined center, and finally with those made up with two or several different murrine.

We believed they were made from the late 1800s through the early 1900s. The ones from the Sick collection average 1911/1930. That does not mean none of them were made before but it does give us a concrete indication of the time period for the majority of them.

Due to their large number (around a thousand ) they are separated in several parts. Part one will show murrine with red and black center. (Note that includes red to brown color and in the black, saturated purple to real purple to be more precise). It will be followed later with blue, green, yellow, white, undefined center and mixed murrine.

We are adding specimens from the Sick sample cards housed in the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam which we haven't found yet in the African trade. Because they are pictures of a picture the quality won't be as sharp as the originals but still acceptable for references.

For more information on the subject we will refer you to Jamey Allen's introduction and ours in volume VI in our series of Beads from the African Trade.

John and Ruth Picard

Please note that these beads are not for sale.

Click on the photo below to view the Exhibit