About the Process

My name is Chiara Pompanin, owner and founder of Chiara Made, and I make intricate clay jewelry using a technique called “Millefiori” which was popularized in Italy (I’m also Italian which makes the history of this style extra special to me). The term uses two Italian words (“mille” which means thousand, and “fiori” which means flowers), and while I use polymer clay and an oven, the original technique utilizes glass and a (much hotter) furnace. Below, I’ll break down a bit of the history behind this technique that I love, and hopefully, you’ll fall in love too. 

While millefiori is best known as an Italian technique, Egyptians were the first to use the technique of fusing rods of glass between the 3rd and 1st century BC, and many archeological examples have been found all over Europe (glass rods used in millefiori have been found all over Europe, including archeological sites in Ireland, England, and Sweden). Romans also used the technique around the same time as the Egyptians, and the oldest Roman Millefiori beads that have been found date back to between 50 BCE and 300 CE. After the 8th century, the art of millefiori glass-making was lost until the 15th century, during the Renaissance in Europe, and it was at this time that it became a popular technique in Murano, the glassmaking capital of Venice. These days, this technique is still used to make traditional glass goods, but it’s become just as popular to use materials like polymer clay as it’s a lot easier to work with.