Murano, Murrini, Millefiori and Other Glass Confusion

Fish with murrini eyes and decorative murrini accents

Today, when I was getting ready for a bit of torch fun, I threw out this sentence~ 'I'm just going to make a few murrini.' The response? 'I thought you had to go to Italy to do that.' Hmmm, and this from someone who has slogged through many years of listening to me talk about glass, glass and more glass. I'm sure a lot of folks are confused by glass terms because, well, a lot of them sound similar. And what's with all the Italian words?! So I'm here to, hopefully, make a little of it make sense.

Follow this link to find out more about the language of lampwork.

Murano~ Many of you are familiar with 'Murano Glass'. Murano glass is simply glass that is made by traditional methods on the island of Murano in Italy. But... The supplies for most of the beads I make are made on that same island. Some companies will call their glass Murano glass because the raw materials for the items are made in Murano. There are actually strict rules about what should labeled Murano glass ~ find more information about that here.

Making the cane

Heating the glass to stretch it

The canes before being cut

Murrini~ A slice of composite cane which creates a pattern in cross section. Lino Tagliapietra gives a thorough explanation on his website. There are a number of different ways to make this cane, both over a torch and in the kiln. Glass is layered into a large barrel shape, which creates a pattern within. The cane is then heated and stretched into a thinner rod, which reveals a pattern in cross section when it is sliced after it has cooled. These slices or chips are then applied to hot glass in a number of different ways. They can be applied on the surface or encased with clear glass; melted flat to the larger glass piece or left as bumps on the glass. Nearly any pattern can be made using this technique, as shown by Loren Stump. Find more information here. My own murrini are pretty simple. I've still got a lot to learn in that department!


Millefiori~ Italian for 'thousand flowers', millefiori is a lot of murrini laid up right next to each other, often covering an entire glass piece or an area of a piece. I personally expect the murrini in a piece referred to as millefiori to be patterned in a way that looks like flowers. Otherwise, I would refer to the glass piece as having a 'mosaic' design., which is what these patterns were called prior to about 1849.

Moretti~ A type of soft glass commonly used in glass beadmaking which is made by the Effetre company on the island of Murano.

Here's a wee bit more about my own murrini use.

Murrini!

My murrini is on the purple, Kaz's on the blue and orange

Oh my! I've gone on a murrini making binge. I bought a few from Kaz Baildon in England, but couldn't wait for them to arrive, so I got a rod nipper and began making a few of my own. Still working on making them turn out as I have envisioned them- right now, some come out quite nice and others, well, not so much. But, because I'm making them, I must also learn to use them. I have resisted this whole silly thing for more than 15 years! Now? Well, I may be getting just a wee bit addicted....


If you are not a bead maker or glass afficianado, you may wonder what the heck a murrini is. For your edification, I must, as usual, point you to the wiki about such things. One builds a tube shaped blob of glass using a lot of different colors, pulls it into a rod and then cuts thin bits off of it. These cross section pieces have sweet designs in them that get placed onto the hot bead. They can look like just about anything- the classic use is in a millefiori (thousand flowers) design, where piles of flowery-looking murrini are placed all over a piece. But a murrini doesn't have to look like a flower- it can be a fish, a heart, a star, your initials- anything, really!

So now on to the small touch of something I think I've learned. First, in the purple fish pictured- the murrini at the bottom is encased, while the ones at the top of the bead are placed on the surface and melted in. The encased murrini was an extremely thin slice which I simply laid on my marver and picked up with the hot bead. Because it was so thin, there was no worry about it shocking and breaking. And it was easy to melt smooth and encase. A nice use of those bits that are simply too thin to pick up, and it really shows off the design nicely.



Another cool thing is the 'barnacle effect' as seen on the tree bead. As best I can remember, I did not melt these murrini all the way down, but got them about 1/2 way melted in and then  put a blob of clear on top. Not exactly what I was going for- it looks a barnacle or eye-leafed tree, but it's a fairly fun idea that could be used effectively somewhere, I'm sure! Those wee murrini next to the tree are the ones I used on it, and my favorite pull so far- modeled after peacock tail eyes.

If you are interested in learning the art of murrini making, I can highly recommend the October 2013 issue of the Soda Lime Times. I read through all the different instructions there and ended up sort of combining things together. John Rizzi did a particularly nice job with his tut! The magazine also has murrini recipes from a whole bunch of different people. I have not attempted to follow any of those, but it was great to see see what folks do!

I use just regular tweezers ('cause that's what I've got!), but I have heard that it is helpful to have either tungsten tipped tweezers (so they won't stick) or some pipe and tube or universal cylinder tweezers from Micro-Mark. I have not tried these, but folks were pretty excited about them on facebook.