Vox Publica

Along with beads, I've been buying some pendants on e-bay. Many of the cheaper ones are described as "Murano Lampwork Glass". Apparently Murano glass is an exquisitely dedicated glass from the Venetian island of Murano. I've never seen a real sample myself, so I have no idea what it looks like. I do know that the real stuff sells for quite a lot of money. For example, this one sells for $43 at Amazon.

The ones on e-bay sell for much less and come from China. Though the description of the items might suggest they come from Murano, I think it's pretty evident given the price and location of the sellers, that the pendants are made of Murano style glass.

I've bought a few of these and I'm really impressed by how beautiful they are. The colors are very vibrant and the designs quite nice. I'm particularly impressed by a blue coil-shaped one which I'm sure I'll wear frequently. The picture to the left, which I took, just cannot do justice to the beautiful coloring.

I'm also planning to give some of these as presents (I'm thinking of giving one to my mail carrier who has brought a lot of little brown envelopes to my house in the last few weeks - I hope she doesn't read my blog ;-)) and I'll probably buy a couple of more for myself now that I know how pretty they are.

All these said, a word of caution. Not all the sellers on e-bay are trustworthy (I've bought mine from athena_lovly, they took about 20 days to arrive), but you can also buy the pendants on Amazon and the pendants are quite large and heavy, too big for a child. And indeed, coming from China you never know if there is lead in the glass, so I'm keeping my kids away form them, just in case.