Fooled by Lacquer

This is one of those stories about how no matter how much stuff you see, sometimes it's just hard to figure out what you're looking at.

Elwing saw this rosary and saw flawless shining ebony beads. I looked at it, tapped it on things, and thought it sounded like plastic. It was too glossy and perfect to be wood and I couldn't see a grain under my loupe. I thought I'd nailed it when I saw what looked like seams. It was Bakelite. Plastic! The rosary was from the 1920s. I wrote this:

The oval beads appear to be ebony but are actually a very hard and shiny plastic called "bakelite" that was a used in the 1920s and 30s to make many different things, especially jewelry. These bakelite rosary beads would have been considered quite "space age" for their time. Offset by these very new materials is a very old style of rosary making. The links and pins are very typical of rosaries made 50 years before, with the pin threaded deep within each bead. The wrap style with which the crucifix is attached is also more typical for an older rosary. This rosary was most likely manufactured between 1922 and 1944.

And I even listed it as a "Large Bakelite Rosary". Elwing saw the listing and said "really plastic? I was positive they were wood." I'd been positive they were plastic, but I looked again and I found what looked like chip, but it looked like a chip in wood, not in plastic. So, what were they?! I had the listing up and we had no idea. The beads appeared to be both wood and plastic at the same time. Then it hit me. Lacquer. The beads were lacquered wood - so it was kind of both. It explained the shiny appearance as well as the "seams" (imperfections in the way the beads were dipped and dried). It's amazing how well lacquer can imitate plastic and yet at the same time, looks very different. There is a warmth not present in plastic (that I attributed to the fact that I didn't know much about bakelite and that it was a nicer material than I thought.)

It just goes to show how mysterious the rosary is...