The Magdalen rosary
I
suppose this is a misnomer, since the original actually belongs to St.
Joseph, but the main character in the painting is St. Mary Magdalen, so
that's how I think of it.
What gave me the idea to do this was seeing the large "ambroid" beads at my local bead store. I had been looking for something like this, but I still have not seen actual amber beads of this shape for sale anywhere (let alone at this large size).
"Ambroid" is a name for something also called "pressed amber." Scraps and small pieces of actual amber are put into a mold, heated, and pressed together. Amber melts easily enough that it's fairly easy to produce "fused" shapes this way, amber being basically an aged plant resin. (Some modern plastic may also be involved in this process, but I decided I don't want to know, if it is.)
Ambroid is both easier to get and considerably cheaper than native amber, and if you don't mind having some "fracture flaws" in your amber, it's quite nice looking.
This was my source for the major beads, which are (relatively speaking) approximately the same size and shape that Joseph is holding in the painting.
It's hard to see much detail in the reproduction I have of the painting, but clearly the three gauds or marker beads in this rosary are flattened ovals of some white or ivory-colored substance. They may be intended to represent ivory or bone. I was very happy to find these large carved drum-shaped beads of bone at Embellishments online. They are almost an inch in diameter and the carving is pretty good.
I decided to make my copy with two groups of ten beads, rather than two groups of eight like the one in the painting. I can't think of any prayer system that uses sixteen or nineteen prayers, so I think this may be a case of the artist painting a number of beads that "looks right" artistically, rather than a number that would actually have been used.
The cord and tassels are black silk pearl in a couple of different sizes. The holes in both the bone and the amber beads are rather large, and two strands of the silk looked too thin, so I plied several strands of silk together to make a more substantial cord.
This rosary gets second looks and "Wow!" comments whenever I wear it because it's so spectacular.
