Large Murini Bead

This bead has 12 murini pieces spaced in between white crossing zigzags trails. The historic bead on which it is based is thought to be either a Viking or Northern/Central European bead. It is also very possible that this bead was imported into those areas from the Middle East. For example, the design is very similar to this syrian cane bead from the Corning Glass Museum.

The original is larger than my bead (my bead measures 2 cm in height, and 1.75 cm in diameter). I made mine smaller because I did not have a mandrel which could make a hole as large as the extant bead, so making it full size would have required a huge amount of glass and time.

Here you can see a section of the cane that I pulled to make the murini. It is about 20 inches long.