Romano-Egyptian Millefiori Glass Fragment

The creation of millefiori patterns in glass was a time-consuming technique that took skill and patience. Thin canes of different colours were heated together in a certain order, producing the flower patterns, hence the name millefiori meaning thousand flowers. It was then fuse into one larger cane and stretched to reduce the size of the imagery and left to cool. The cane was then sliced into small discs and formed into beads or placed across a hot glassware vessel. The vessel would be blown for a second time to merge the pieces of glass and then left to cool in the desired shape. This process was originally discovered by the Egyptians when producing Millefiori glass and then later developed by the Greeks and Romans.