sample card

The Grilli archive of decorative beaded fringes consists of 100 paper sample cards with numbered designs, floral and geometric, made of multicolored strung beads attached to each card. Most cards have two or three samples of beaded fringes on them, although some cards have as many as eight samples. The Casa G. Grilli, founded in 1902, billed itself as the “leading maker of fringes, flowers, leaves, and fantasies in beads.” The showroom and warehouse were located in an old palazzo in the Castello neighborhood of Venice (the building is now the Hotel Ca’Bauta). The sample cards probably came from the company’s “samples room,” photographs of which appear in an illustrated brochure published by Grilli in 1925. The workshops where the glass beads were made were located on the mainland, in Dolo, Oriago, Carpané, and Mestre. Grilli exported its products throughout Europe and to the United States, where beaded fringes were fashionable for lampshades and ladies’ fashions in the first decades of the 20th century. This archive serves as a record of the inventiveness and talent of women beadworkers in Venice in the early 20th century. The Grilli archive may be counted among the many archives of glass products that have been steadily disappearing from Venice over the past 25 years, and the acquisition of this archive gives the Museum an opportunity to preserve something of Venice’s extraordinary beadmaking heritage. Signed: most of the cards have the ink stamp “G. Grilli/Venezia.” The collection is accompanied by the illustrated brochure on the Casa G. Grilli.