At Venice for Visitors, we've just published an illustrated article about Muriel Balensi's Venezi'Arte laboratorio in Castello, where glass beads are made the old-fashioned way: by heating canes of Murano glass with a gas-fired lamp and shaping the softened perle with tongs and other hand tools.

You can watch Ms. Balensi making glass beads when you visit the shop, and you can buy anything from an abstract bead sculpture to a simple, inexpensive necklace made on the spot from beads that you've picked from the artisan's work tray. 

For more information and photos, read our three-page "Venezi'Arte glass bead workshop" article.