I've always thought of checkerboard beads as somehow so....luscious, that a bowl of the same might be too much to take! Wow!
This made it to Beads L a couple of days later and Stefany asked a very good question....
"How do we think the thin murrini slices that make up the dishes were cut in those times ?"
And I appreciated Jamey's response:
"There are essentially two schools of thought on this topic. Routinely, mosaic canes (in fact, any canes) are cold-divided through "controlled fracturing." This demands that the canes (usually done in multiples) are placed against a blunt blade surface (that is vertical and below them), and a chisel-like tool is use to "cut" off thin segments. (This is the Venetian method, used well into the 20th century.) The resulting pieces are often imperfect, and may be concave-convex, and may have damage along edges or corners. This would demand some sorting, presuming only the "nicer" pieces would be used for top-quality work. Of course, it's also possible that pieces were 'spiffed-up" by lapidary grinding to make the desired surfaces (at least on one side) flat and true. But this would add considerable work, in a mass-producing industry.
It has also been suggested that pieces of canes were detached using a saw. I find this rather unbelievable. I suppose it's not impossible, and it may be that some factories did this. But this would have been quite arduous. So, let's say, possible but perhaps unlikely--considering the number of pieces that would be required for any typical millefiori wares.
The fact is, the drawn structure of a cane lends itself to cold-division. Just think of the number of Nueva Cádiz beads (or other drawn beads that are longer than they are wide) that have snapped apart, and often have a reasonably flat break.
By the way, I have synthesized the above through considerable contemplation, and examination of beads--and also from enlightening conversations with Karlis Karklins. This was very useful when I composed my book on Venetian beadmaking, that was published in-part in Beads (The journal of the SBR, Vol. 16, 2004).
Jamey"
