Taken from this jewelry blog (thank you Cindy Bailey!)

Fiorato beads get their start on a copper wire, which forms the hole when finished, by winding the hot colored glass around it into a fairly good sized ball.  The centuries old process is called in Italian perle `a lume–we call it lampwork or lampwound.  For fiorato, the opaque bead is then decorated according to a theme involving glitter, squiggles and rosebuds.  There are as many variations, apparently, as there are bead-makers, or moods of bead-makers, but the basic idea is the same.  First, the dazzling glitter effect is applied.  The glitter is actually a specific type of glass known as avventurina or aventurine (not to be confused with the natural quartz of similar name), derived from  the Italian word a ventura, “by chance”.   This transparent glass infused with copper filings causes an eye-catching gold-like glint when overlaid onto the surface of a bead, and it is characteristic of many exquisite Venetian  beads.  (Apocryphally, aventurine glass was discovered accidentally in a Murano workshop in the 1600s, and for many years was a closely guarded secret.) The next decoration applied are the various squiggles, known as a “trailing pattern”, which are narrow strands of glass “trailed” in loops or zigzags around the bead.  The more there are, the more likely it is the beads are old, as this adds significant time to the manufacture.  Finally, more or less carefully, the floral details are applied:  the rosebuds usually in pink, and the forget-me-nots in dots…

This style of flowered bead  (in a somewhat simpler form) is thought to have made its first appearance in the late 1700s, perhaps in response to the wide European interest in the “language of flowers”, a coquettish code of floral symbolism .   The very earliest substantiated date is 1815.  By the end of the 19th century, versions were being made in Bohemia as well.