The lagoon island of Murano, located off the coast of Venice, is still important today as a production site for the precious export commodity of glass. In the best Venetian tradition, the dazzlingly colored Murano glass beads are also created there, from which this extraordinary Murano jewelry is made in a small jewelry workshop in Pforzheim that also specializes in high-quality closures.

The beads each gain their shape, color and beauty individually by hand under the flame. The processed glass material is extremely break-resistant thanks to a particularly high proportion of aluminum oxide - beyond this information, however, the manufacturing companies do not reveal the secret of the composition of their starting material and their color formulas. Only the iridescence can be explained: A white or yellow fine gold foil is placed over the raw pearl bodies separated from a glass rod - as a base for another colored glass layer - and finally another layer of clear or colored glass is applied over it. For the beads called watercolor, on the other hand, a powder mixture containing copper is added in a particularly elaborate process. About the frosted beads we know this much: their surface is treated with a special machine - a process developed specifically in Murano and used exclusively there.