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If you saw us on TV

WLOS Craft Corner

Luigi was here. . .

. . .and so were his beads.

The pictures below are just a sampling of the goodies displayed in the shop.

A few of the items pictured are available for purchase through our catalog. 

This stunning lariat was designed and made exclusively for A Better Bead featuring one of Luigi's chevron beads.  The focal bead is obvious.  The problem for this design was making sure that the rest of the piece enhanced but did not detract from the chevron. 

The mother-of-pearl in different sizes and shapes accented with lime green seed beads and cat's eye did the trick.  For just a little added sparkle and pizzazz, we added a few Swarovski crystals and just look at the result.  With earrings to match the set is impressive indeed. . .even if we do say so ourselves.

The Business Man, The Artist, The Person

This is a white squirrel bead made exclusively for

A Better Bead.

I am not an artist.  I'm just someone who works with glass.  Born and raised in Murano (Venice) Italy, Luigi comes from a family of glass masters, dating as far back as the 15th Century!  For Luigi, glass and bead making is not a novelty but rather a way of life.  It's in his blood, his culture, his ancestry, and it's in his economy where he has lived his whole life, in Murano, the island where the art of blowing glass originated approximately 500 years ago.  Surrounded by glass artists and craftsmen, furnaces, factories, glass stores, and glass lingo, it was only a matter of time before he would follow the family tradition and work within the glass industry. 

For 20 years, Luigi worked as the director of production in the oldest glass factory in Murano, the Societa' Veneziana Conterie (S.V.C.).  The  S.V.C., founded in 1893, produced chevron and seed beads.  Due to foreign competition from Czech and Asian markets who benefited from low taxes and  labor costs, the S.V.C., was forced to close down in 1992.  As a result, Luigi was left without a steady job.  It was then that he decided to turn his experience and skills into making beads on his own. 

He has since launched the chevron bead back into the Italian and African markets.  Using the compositions of glass from the S.V.C., as well as from his grandfather and great-grandfathers, Luigi is the only remaining Muranese who continues to produce chevron beads.  Following that old adage, one man's junk is another man's treasure, Luigi rummaged through old warehouses and factories on the island and come upon many kilos of old and rare chevron cane which he now makes into beads. 

It is these beads that remind him of the past leaving him with an innate appreciation, understanding and respect for the memory of the Muranese glass masters who went before him.  Luigi also makes blown glass beads, lampworked candy beads, and blows small perfume bottles and vessels. 

Murano, Italy

The only institution of its type in Italy, the Murano Glass Museum now occupies Palazzo Giustinian.

Like the city of Venice, Murano comprises a cluster of small islands, connected by bridges.  It has been the center of the glassmaking industry since 1291 when the furnaces and glass craftsmen were moved here from the city.  This move was prompted by the risk of fire and the disagreeable effects of  smoke from the furnaces.  The buildings and homes of the period constructed almost entirely of wood. 

The island of Murano is about a mile across the water from Venice and, in Roman times, was already inhabited.  Amurianum  was its original name.  Used at first as shelter by refugees escaping from barbaric invasions of Altino, Opitergio and Aquileia in the 5th Century, Murano soon became a fulcrum of important traffics and distinguished itself the glass art. 

Men and women from Oderzo later joined these settlers and by the 7th and 8th centuries, the island’s port of Sant’Erasmo was an important calling-place for merchant ships.  Eventually, Murano grew in population and prosperity reaching its greatest splendor in the 16th century.  During this time, many palaces and houses, churches and monasteries, gardens and orchards sat side by side with glass factories demonstrating the prosperity of this wealthy community.  So densely was the island populated that by the 11th century, the Doges were encouraging islanders to move to Venice.

After the 13th century Murano passed under the jurisdiction of a podesta, a mayor, chosen from the ranks of the Venetian patricians but continued to have its own Grand Council.   It had a Golden Book, in which were entered the names of its original families, all of whom enjoyed special privileges allowing a Veneto aristocrat to marry the daughter of a glass master without losing any of his claims to his noble titles. 

Just as in Venice, Murano too could coin annually. From the mid-14th century onwards, the artisans of Murano sold their products abroad.  They quickly gained a reputation for producing small glass beads and for mirrors which became a major Murano export during the course of the 15th century.  Within fifty years the island’s glasswork had lost much of it utilitarian character and had become a fully fledged art form. 

Because of the growing importance of the glass industry, its artisans had to submit to severe political restrictions in order to balance their very considerable privileges.  By contrast with the rest of Europe, Venice did not require a man to belong to a glassmaking family as a condition for learning the art. Any talented apprentice could rise, step by step, through the ranks to become a master glassmaker.  However, the glassmakers were forbidden to emigrate from Venice on pain of confiscation of all their worldly goods.   Nevertheless it is known that in the 16th century, several glassmakers did succeed in setting up factories in Northern Europe where they also flourished. 

Independent until 1924, Murano boasts a coat-of-arms which is a cock with a snake in its beak and a fox on its back, symbolizing surveillance, shrewdness and prudence.  Murano is currently home to approximately 6,000 Muranese residents.

The craft of the glass master has something miraculous about it.  Using a simple iron rod, the master takes a blob in incandescent glass paste from the pan which lies in the burning furnace.  The preparation of the glass is slow and the process changes according to the type of desired glass.  For a common glass the fusion must reach 1400/1600 degrees Celsius.  For crystals, instead of using calcium carbonate, potassium carbonate is used.  Lead, aluminum, zinc, barium, and carbon dioxide are added to increase stiffness and to help avoid having the glass becomes fragile with time.

The glass master has no model before him; only his skill and his imagination to help him. He puts the long tube to his mouth and with the energy of his lungs, the shimmering glass blob swells, curves, dilates and takes on the shape he desires.  A spatula, pinchers, and a pair of scissors, are some of the instruments that he uses to squash, flatten, cut, pull, curve, and twist.  Having patiently put the glass through a great many and variety of operations, the work of art comes out perfect from the hands of the master and is placed together with all the other works of the day in a long cooling gallery called the ara before it can leave the factory. 

The oldest and most authentic specimens of Murano glass which have come down to us date from the middle of the 15th century.  They consist of cups and glasses with large surfaces of glass in strong colors of ruby red, cobalt blue and emerald green.  Each was painted by the master with profane scenes, erotic incidents, portraits of married couples in gazes and the like.  The real glory of blown, transparent glass, the Venetian crystal came between the end of the 15th century and the beginning of the 16th century.  The most beautiful blown glass of all was produced by the Murano factories in this period and is to be seen in public and private Italian and foreign collections as well as in the the paintings of Titian, Veronese and Bonifazio de’ Pitati. 

The old traditional family names of the Murano glass blowers, each with its own busy furnace revived, are as follows:

Barovier, Ferro, Fuga, Radi, Salviati, Seguso, Toso

Luigi's Beads

Venetian Glass Trunk Show

March 10 - 13, 2010

We have beads everywhere; on the porch, in the bead rooms,

on the walls, on the floor, in the windows, nearly everywhere inside and  out.

Size Comparison

Single Red Bead:  35 X 20mm

Polished Blue:  17.75" strand

Matte Blue:  28.5" strand