But I hope some real Venetian experts will chime in and verify - I am just a beginner at this.

Really pretty beads - how large is the big one?

It is cool to post any photos or comment about beads here. I hope to see more of your beads!

Hi John,

If Venetian, these are the poorest effort at lampwork fancy "wedding cakes" to date.

The shape is wrong. The hue of the metallic trailing ("aventurine") is wrong, the color of the floral decor not like any Venetian, the nature of the blue and white dots different than Venetian (softer glass).

Yet they look different from India versions. These may have been made in Indonesia.

Here is an image of a Conterie sample card of Venetian "wedding cakes" from approx. the early 1960s. Note the wholesale prices hand written on the card. There are many, many versions of floral fancies that get called "wedding cakes" - these are only one, just to show some basic characteristics.

Hi Joyce & John

There were probably some earlier 20th century Czech copies of Venetian fiorato beads (the Venetian name for them John - it means flower beads) which come earlier than the later 20th century Indian versions. The ones I have seen over the years can come in graduated sets, and nearly always the glass 'has difficulties' and flakes off like John's beads have done. So I suggest Czech as a possibility.

Carole

Hi everyone thank you for your nice welcome I have been around for awhile and have never posted a question before.

Thank you for your responses Joyce this is John Rizzi and I think I have shown you these beads in person before and you were kind of up in the air if they what they were. It was so cool to see those wedding cake beads on the card they look very nice.

I am now more curious as to where they came from.

Does anyone have any suggestions of someplace to take them to have them really closely looked at.

Thanks again for all your help,

John

Fancy that, you decided to post! I admit I don't remember seeing these in person, must have been a few years ago.

John himself makes very inspired and artistic glass beads in the Russian River area of beautiful Northern California.

I wish more contemporary bead makers would share their art here. What could be more collectible?, especially when we have the internet to learn about the individual makers, something we know little about with antique beads. Thanks for sharing that, Joyce.

Hey Thanks I am glad you like to see the beads I make I would be more than happy to post more pictures of my work.

Here I on of my interpretations of a chevron style bead.

John

The plot thickens - here are some advertised imitations. John's beads do not look exactly like these, which makes me still wonder if they are imitations.

Here is another set of beads these I think are venetian beads.

May not be old at all but I thought I would see what you guys thought.

Definitely Venetian, John. They incorporate many of the E. Moretti canes which are still made and used, so they could be 20 years or 2 years old. Morettis made me a lot of these 20 years ago.

Carole

Salve,
viste cosė sembrano perlefiorate di manifattura veneziana... ma con qualche dubbio. Recentemente ho visto alcune perle di provenienza indiana..che assomigliano, ma queste hanno il foro molto piccolo.
comunque quelle perle non sono di buona manifattura, sono molto grossolane ed eseguite da una mano poco esperta.
saluti a tutti

Anyone have clues on how to differentiate Czech from Venetian "wedding cake" type fancies, especially those with gold leaf/foil? Also, how much overlap exists in the time periods?
Thanks

Here's my stab at it:

These seem to be fiorate beads of Venetian manufacture but with some doubt. Recently I have seen some beads of Indian origin -that are similar, but have much smaller holes. However these beads (the ones pictured) are not of good manufacture, very rough and are executed from a hand of low expertise. Greetings to all.

Venetian fancies