I'm trying to upload a photo, bear with me! :P

It sounds like a wonderful group of beads are now yours! The sparkly metallic effect inside your sommersos is indeed tiny copper particles, the same sort which are suspended in the "drizzles" or trail decor upon the "wedding cake" beads.....over at Google translate, "sommerso" translates to "submerged"...take a 14x loupe to your beads, it will be interesting.

The fancy Venetian beads that are decorated with gold leaf on the OUTSIDE are a different animal entirely. This exterior decor is very fragile, and should be handled with extreme care. Don't sleep in them like I do many of my beads. You can almost visibly rub this gold foil off, which is why examples that have survived for decades in great condition are rare.

Yet another effect is indeed gold leaf inside, or underneath clear glass. I have some plain ones like this. They are an irregular shape, with the bright gold foil protected by clear glass. But it looks nothing like the sparkly aventurine of "sommerso" beads.

Confusing, I know , but hope this helps.

Thank you Joyce for the explanation. Especially the information on how fragile the gold foil is, and that it can be underneath as well. I think mine in the photo must be aventurine submerged in that sommerso bead.

Normally, if you hold something like a gold clasp and a copper clasp up to a bead you can easily tell if the inclusion or surface decoration is gold or aventurine (copper). It's sometimes hard to tell from pictures due to variations in color rendition.

Some of the "drizzle" on wedding cake beads is gold and some is aventurine. In general I think gold foil decoration is more rare but other forumites may be able to clarify that.

Wow! That's a great tip, I'll do that!

Hi Vicky,
hopefully following pictures can help you.
These two beads belong to a friend of mine and made before 1952.
The first is an Aventurine Lampwound bead - Venice
The second is a Goldfoil Lampwound bead - Venice

The first is a Silverfoil Lampwound bead - Venice before 1952
The second picture are older beads, Goldfoil between two drawn glass tubes - probably made in South East Asia, collected in Java

sorry, maybe the SE Asia beads are not Gold foil but probably Silver colored foil under an amber colored glastube.

Hans, thank you, the bead examples you posted are very helpful.
Another question: is the gold and silver foil pretty much always a thin application (like the word foil implies?).

There are some rare powderglass beads made by the Krobo people in Ghana were gold dust is sprinkled on the grinded glasspowder before heating. This is a modern bead.

Here are some tips for identifying sparkly metal in lampwork glass beads:

Most of the shiny gold and silver is sheets of metal "leaf", which is a thinner (and less expensive) version of foil.

To my knowledge*, only high karat gold and fine silver can handle the high temperatures of the torch without turning black in the flame. Thin metal leaf, while less expensive, also burns away easily.

Because of this, gold and silver elements used in beads are usually covered with transparent glass for protection - either buried in deep layers (sommerso) or with a thin coating for surface decoration. As Joyce mentioned, a lot of "gold" is actually silver with a yellow transparent layer.

Gold foil can also be coated with clear glass and "stretched" which creates a flaked or textured appearance.

Goldstone, gold leaf, dichroic -- can be tricky to differentiate.
--Shiny or matte gold is usually foil/leaf
--Sparkly/shimmery gold is either goldstone (powdered copper encased
in clear or glass)
--Sparkly/shimmery that changes colors is likely dichroic glass(glass
coated with metal oxides).

DISCLAIMER -- There's a lot of shiny gold showing up in cheap Chinese beads...I can't imagine that it's real gold, so perhaps they've found another metal that cheap and stands up to the heat of lampwork torches.

This is a great explanation, just what I've been looking for. Thank you!

From the marble-collector side of things, I figure I might add that aventurine -- the sparkly gold glass kind -- is actually a precipitate of copper, produced through a kind of tricky process. Generally it's present in the hot glass as cupric oxide (a colorant, used primarily for blues and greens), but if present in enough quantity and the glass is heated hot enough in an oxygen-reduced atmosphere, tiny crystals of copper will form. It can look like gold or copper. It can also be blue or green, or sometimes bronze or even black or silver. One of the vintage marble companies (Peltier Glass) used it fairly often on certain marble types in the 1930s. Interestingly, if you take it beyond the point of forming aventurine you might get what marble collectors call oxblood.

A Peltier "Zebra" with bronze and green aventurine, and an Alley Agate "oxblood."

I love that oxblood!

I think with all the responses you should be able to distinguish the different types.
Couple things to add: Aventurine glass or goldstone glass does not like direct heat from the torch. It's sparkle will go away when heated too much. Not just silver and gold foil and leaf are used in lampwork. Copper is also used sometimes as leaf. It is sometimes cut into shapes and added to a glass piece. It get's a nice colored look and when treated right it keeps it's shape.

Gold and silver are also often used for 'fuming' especially by modern glass artists. It creates the most beautiful results.

The books by Jargstorff are great for what you are looking into. Not so much for identification, but for the history, you might also enjoy my books on 'Beads from Jablonec' and 'Beads from Germany'. They can be downloaded for free.

"Aventurine glass or goldstone glass does not like direct heat from the torch. It's sparkle will go away when heated too much."

Exactly! It's on the road to oxblood . . . if you're lucky. A fine mess, if not!

You're right, I think I can tell the difference now, so MUCH good information has been shared here, I so appreciate it. I have downloaded your books from your site, and looked at ALL the card samples (love love). And today I purchased 2 Picard books and the Dupin. I'm building a bead library! I HAVE to to understand this windfall.

Yep. You're a goner now.

Not beads, but gold and green aventurine glass, just for pleasure . . .

Just because..

Oh My! Those are too gorgeous, eye candy.

That's how we live in bead land!

Ooh some of my favorites!

OK, OK, a bead . . .