Supersize me.

It seems that one of the biggest difference between rosaries in Europe and in the United States is one of size. Americans like their rosaries the same way they like their meal portions, their cars, and their houses:

BIG!

Europeans on the other hand, like a smaller rosary.

This rosary is from Europe and it is quite special. It is from Belgium, and has very unusual white enamelling offset by its bronze hardware. The unusual opalescent beads are shaped like grains of rice and have a great deal of depth and sparkle. Attached to the drop is are a tiny matching blue Our Lady of Lourdes medal and a unique openwork bronze Mary Queen of Heaven medal.

The hanging length of the rosary is a mere 20 inches. Actually that's quite long by European standards, this rosary is has a mere 16 inch hanging length.



To put things in perspective, the average American rosary has a hanging length of 24 inches and 8mm beads.

And the Silver Medal goes to...

Just so you don't think we're obsessed with rosaries only, here are 2 awesome silver Lourdes medals: the cruciform one came from Elwing and the other I found.

Exactly who is St. Regis?

This is why antique rosaries are so cool. This rosary appears to be close to 100 years old and everything about it is different from what we're used to (except for the basic 5 decade layout which is the same). This rosary is very large and was clearly made by hand. Its hanging length is a full 2 feet and the beads are quite large. Each one is slightly different and it looks as though they were made on a lathe and then cut apart afterwards.

The crucifix is also very large - 2 inches tall and is very heavy brass with inlaid wood. The center medal has a dedication to the Virgin Mary on one side with the word "Mater Dei" and to Saint John Francis Regis who was canonized in 1737.

This rosary is currently available for auction on ebay.

A rosary is a chaplet, but is a chaplet a rosary?

This is a Stations of the Cross chaplet from Poland that I picked up for almost nothing because nobody knew what it was. To understand how rosaries work you have to speak French. In French the word for rosary is "chaplet", the word used in English to refer to other beaded devotions besides the rosary. So in France, all beaded devotions are chaplets, and so any devotion, such as the Stations of the Cross which is normally placed on the walls or floors of a church, can become a chaplet by translating it into beads.

For this chaplet, one Our Father and three Hail Marys are said for each station. The drop and medal actually represent a "fifteenth station", the resurrection, and are recited last.


This rosary is currently available for auction on ebay.

What's for dinner? Mmmm.... Rosaries.

I call it "ludicrous lighting".

I figured that since I have nice rosaries and the rosaries that Elwing sent me were really cool, I should take nice pictures. I wanted pictures like the professional auction pictures I've been using. But I know almost nothing about photography.

So, between Elwing and I tinkering with ideas and lighting and web sites, this is what I finally came up with. Luckily my table is so small that I don't need to use stands for the lamps. The box is a "lighting tent" that is used by photographers to do any kind of product photography. The idea is that by lighting the outsides of this translucent colorcorrected white fabric, your object is bathed in non-directed but bright shadowless light. So, that's how it's done.

Jewelry, it turns out, needs one more ridiculously bright light in order to look good. The third light (clipped to the tripod) I actually hold in my hand until I get the best reflection (ie. it looks all sparkly). Since everything is small I have to take the pictures at very high resolution to get any kind of detail. This means that even the movement of me taking the picture shakes the camera too much so I use the delay timer after focusing.

A single rosary can take up to half an hour to position and photograph.

Viva La Marcasites!

I really like marcasite jewelry. The first piece of jewelry that I ever owned was a marcasite Star of David. Given that I like marcasites so much I always thought that if I could find a marcasite rosary that that would really be something. This one is pretty unusual, but it does have marcasites. I really like the assembly on this rosary. The ivy on the crucifix is really lovely and look - there's that's image of Jesus with the crown of thorns again. It's no suprise that when you flip the crucifix and center medal over it has the same hallmarks as my favorite rosary ever. I guess there's no accounting for taste.

This rosary is really long. I don't know the hanging length, but I can imagine it's around 27 inches. I've also never seen a rosary with a matched bunch of cross medals like this one has. Also they are attached in the middle of each decade (and at the drop) rather than at the Our Fathers like most medals are. It's a very weird, but cool rosary.


Look at all those crosses... And each one has a marcasite in the center.