Rope Silver chain bracelet strung with 24 antique Venetian handblown glass beads, created on the Venice lagoon in the late 1800s, specifically for use in trade in Africa. Venice is historically a major manufacturer of glass objects and centuries ago, due to the unacceptable fire risk of the industry’s furnaces, all glass-making business was sited on the islands in the Venice lagoon.
In the 19th.century the merchants of North Africa, wanting to profit from an ever-growing European demand for the products of the less developed regions of the southern parts of Africa, commissioned great quantities of coloured glass objects from Venice, the leading regional supplier of such, for bartering in trade. It is no surprise, a hundred odd years later, to learn that Timbuktu in Mali is still a reliable source of these old Venetian glass trade beads, for Timbuktu was an important entrepot in the trade between the Mediterranean and sub-Sahara Africa.

These old hand-blown multi-coloured glass trade beads were created with large holes allowing for ease of stringing on fibrous twine, making them very suitable for threading on the Rope Silver chain of the above bracelet. ( One end cap of the above chain can be screwed on and off, so that if one wanted, all the beads could be removed. )