Why Are Rosaries Called Rosaries?

Last week, while in the Portland (Oregon) area, I spent a day driving east along the Columbia River Gorge. Icy, windy, and cold, yet fabulously beautiful, I enjoyed every minute, both in and out of my car. You can see more of my scenic photos of the day here.

Multnomah Falls, Columbia River Gorge, Nov. 2014

At the "Bridge of the Gods," I crossed the Columbia and headed east along the Washington shoreline toward Bingen, stopping to use the facilities at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum. Seeing a sign on the admission desk about "the world's largest collection of Rosaries, over 4,000 of them," and remembering that rosaries = beads, I decided to take the time to view the collection.

Virtual Reality Photo by Jim Cole - Rosary Collection, Housed at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum

You can hardly imagine 4,000 rosaries... so many different types of beads... simple seed pods to elegant gold-capped jet, and everything in between. From a bead lover's perspective, it was heaven (except, of course, I wanted to fondle them all). The "virtual reality" photo above, "borrowed" from the internet, gives a correct impression of the quantity. This rosary collection is the life-work of Don Brown, a founder of the regional historical society.

Here are a few of the photos I took of the collection:

And now, finally, we get to the meat of this post! The word rosary... where did it come from? According to the online Etymology Dictionary, the word rosary dates to the mid 15th Century, and is derived from the Latin words rosarius, meaning "of roses" and rosarium, meaning "rose garden."

But wait, there's more to the story! In Medieval times, monasteries and castles had formal rose gardens, which provided baskets full of fresh rose petals from which to make beads for strands of prayer beads used by Monks and Noblemen. Of roses... the beads were made of roses, hence the term rosary, which over time was applied to most prayer strands (particularly those used by Catholics)  made from any type of beads.

A museum curator at a small natural history museum in Hungary, once showed me a 300-year-old rosary, the beads made from rose petals. "Cup it in your hands for a minute," she said, "and then smell it." WOW! After 300 years, it had the delicate fragrance of roses!

Rose-petal-beads don't look like much. They are matte black, imperfectly shaped, and a little bumpy or lumpy. Yet, in addition to their beautiful aroma, they have great character and charm.

The Don Brown collection includes several rose-petal-bead rosaries, most of which are toward the back of the display pegs. However, I'm willing to bet that the beads of the forward rosary on peg number 159 are made of rose petals.

How to Make Rose Petal Beads

YOU can make your own beads of rose petals! Collect a large basket full of fresh, dry (no mist or rain moisture) petals (early in the morning, when they are the most fresh). Mash the petals into a thick paste, using a mortar and pestle, or try grinding them in a meat grinder or food processor. The paste will be black. Allow excess moisture to evaporate for a few days if necessary, stirring several times a day. The natural rose fragrance may be enhanced with essential oil of rose.

Form the paste into bead-shaped balls. Side the newly formed balls onto a straight piece of stainless steel wire (piano wire, or similar). Place a row of balls on the wire, leaving a 1/4 inch space between each bead. Place the wire from side-to-side on the rim of a baking pan, and allow the beads to air-dry. The drying process can take weeks, depending on the humidity and room temperature. Turn the beads daily on the wire to prevent them from permanently adhering to it. Do not hasten drying by placing in an oven or direct sunlight, as they will dry on the outside and remain soft on the inside.

If there is absolutely no "give" when you squeeze them, the beads are ready to take off the wire and string. When properly dried, the beads are very hard and durable. Here is an on-line tutorial about making rose-petal-beads, a bit different than the way I've made them (described above), and very informative.

Other Exhibits at the Columbia Gorge Interpretive Center Museum

Although my intent was to view the rosary collection and then get on my way, I could not help but take some extra minutes to see the Native American Beadwork/baskets and Vintage Quilt exhibits.

Feathered Star, c.1869, hand pieced and quilted, triangles are about 1/2" high

Feathered Star, detail

Embroidered Quilt, c. 1880, over 400 squares (3" each), wildflower designs embroidered with wool thread

Embroidered Quilt, detail showing wool thread embroidery on 3" wool fabric blocks

If you're thinking you might want to visit the Columbia Gorge Museum while vacationing with your husband, he might want to know there are lots of very manly things to see there, including this fabulous 1921 Mack logging truck, which still runs!

1921 Mack AC Log Truck - It Still Runs!

As always, you can click on any of the pictures to see a larger version (more detail). If your system operates like mine, you'll get a click through slide show of the photos in this post, starting with the one you clicked on.

Showcase 500 – Beaded Jewelry

book cover

Lark Books has really done a great job with this book. But that’s no surprise because the fact is:  BEADERS are skill-building faster than you can say the word bead. Of course it’s fantastic!

back cover

I am totally impressed with these 500 pieces, made by 278 artists from many different countries around the world. Just a few decades ago, beaded jewelry was pretty much limited to simple earrings and strung necklaces. Now bead weaving and bead embroidery have joined forces with bead stringing yielding a beautiful and vast array of beaded jewelry.

fun necklace by Stephanie Sersich

As the book’s editor, Ray Hemachandra, points out in the introduction, “This collection includes work from many of the world’s best-known beading artists – the superstars and the master designers and teachers – and it also presents pieces made by talented beaders whose work has not been published previously.” All of it is good. All is inspirational and amazing.

Let’s let the photos speak for themselves. Here are a few of my personal favorites.

I always love Carole Horn's work!

Couldn't decide which of Carole's necklaces to include, so they're both here!

I like it that some of the pieces are primarily metalwork, with just a few accent beads.

If you click the picture, you'll be able to see more detail. I love this piece!

You'll find everything from funky to sublimely elegant in this book.

Myra Schwartz has a whole series of pieces featuring vintage pipes. She's an amazing designer.

I am so grateful to own this book, and recommend it 100% to anybody who loves beads, even if you don’t choose to make beaded jewelry. There’s so much about art, about color, about design, and about the beads themselves to be gained from study of these 500 pieces.

Here’s a link to buy it on Amazon, although I’m sure it’s also available in many bookstores and from many other online sources.

Heidi's work is always captivating. This one is so powerful, I had to include the detail shot below.

Talk about using beads to tell a story! Wow!

My one regret? Well… I received an invitation to submit pieces for publication in this book, but was so busy doing projects for and writing my own book (The Complete Photo Guide to Beading), that I let the deadline slip by. Whaaaa. I’d give a lot to be in such good company as the artists in this book. Congratulations to them all!

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By the way, my new book is available to pre-order on Amazon, here! It will be out early in December.

Writing & Publishing Beading Books, Part 4

Preparing a Book for Traditional Publishing

If you’ve been reading Parts 1-3, you know that my first book was self-published. Book #2 was published by Interweave Press, with some dissatisfaction on both sides, leading me to stick with self-publishing for books #3-7, the last of which was released in 2008.

Bead Embroidery - Beading on Stiffened Felt

After that, my focus shifted from books to family, as my parents’ health declined. First I lost my dad, and last March, my mom. Those were some tough years. I didn’t have extra energy to produce books. Yes, there were a couple on the back burner (still there), but nothing happened. In fact, I thought about retiring, not from doing beadwork, but from teaching and authoring beading books.

Three months into the grieving process for Mom, a brief message arrived via email. I almost chucked it out. It said, “I am an acquisition editor for Creative Publishing international. Looking for an author for The Complete Photo Guide to Beadwork. Please contact me if you might be interested."

“Yeah right,” I thought, “sounds like one of those typical, run-of-the-mill, blah-formula project books that totally don’t interest me.” To this day, I’m not sure why I replied, cautiously asking for more information.

Bead Weaving - Sculptural Peyote

Good thing I did, because it has given me the opportunity of a lifetime! Turns out CPI is the American branch of Quayside Publishing in London. Once I started researching their line of Complete Photo Guide books (to Jewelry Making, Textile Art, Knitting, Creative Painting, and more), I am totally impressed. All of them emphasize techniques and feature lots of stunning photography. Plus, they are comprehensive, large-format, 250+ pages, and beautifully printed on high-quality paper. To be part of this series would put me in very good company! If you’re not familiar with this series of books, take a look on Amazon, or better yet, check out your local Michael’s, which carries many of them in their book department.

Bead Stringing - Hand Knotting

After seeing the books, I knew THIS would be a chance to write the book I’ve wanted to own ever since I began beading in 1985, a book that could teach me all types of beading, give me information about beads and in-depth methods for designing and finishing my bead projects. It would need to include the following main sections:

About Beads - Trade Beads

1. All about beads ~ giving important tips and information that would help me choose beads for my projects, for example, how to tell the difference between stone, glass and plastic beads, or the difference between fake and real pearls.

2. Bead stringing ~ with “teaching-projects” designed to build skills from one to the next, including Japanese pearl hand-knotting methods and beginning-to-advanced wire working.

3. Bead weaving ~ again with progressive skill-building projects, including chapters on peyote, brick, right angle weave, netting, crochet and knitting with beads.

4. Bead embroidery ~ starting with making a stitch sampler of all the basic, fancy, edge and fringe stitches, and progressing to projects that emphasize various design approaches and base materials, including fabric, stiffened felt, fiber-collage and paper.

Bead Embroidery - Beads & Fiber Arts

Wouldn’t that just be the cat’s meow? My students and customers have been asking for such a book FOREVER. I don’t know why it’s not been done before. But I can assure you, it’s being done now!

I’m getting ahead of myself. So, with excitement and a lot of trepidation about whether I could pull it off successfully, I signed another book-length contract and got to work. A word about contracts. They’re written with the publisher’s best interests at heart, of course, and prevent them from liability. Plus this one essentially gave the publisher the right to re-publish “my book” or any part of it in any country, in any language, in any form without compensation to me. It’s also an unusual contract in that they pay me a flat fee for preparing the book. There are no royalties. I guess this would be good for me if the book were a flop. But I honestly expect sales will exceed their wildest dreams.

Bead Weaving - Netting

For about 2 minutes, I wondered at my sanity. I knew it would require untold hours of work and energy, probably amounting to a wage of about $1 or $2 per hour. But I didn’t care. I wanted to write this book. I wanted to give back to the beading community some of what it has given me in the past 28 years. I wanted to do it for the love of beads and beading. So I signed.

Different publishers work differently with authors. CPi seems very trusting, allowing me to build the book the way I think best, as long as I stay within the general style of the series. They also gave me permission to recruit guest artists to contribute teaching projects in areas where I lack expertise.

Bead Embroidery - Improvisational Design

My first step was to produce a rough outline of the topics and projects that needed to be included. Then, taking a hard look at my own beading skills, I noted those areas where I was lacking and set about finding guest artists. Fortunately I have a great network through the Bead Journal Project, teaching, and blogging. I soon found 9 artists who were willing to help me. They would design a project, write the instructions, take step-out photographs and send everything to me. I would make their project, following their steps, and then edit everything to be consistent in style with my own instructions.

I am much indebted to these wonderful, talented artists! Their contributions round out the book, making it truly comprehensive in a way I couldn’t have done on my own!

Bead Stringing - Complex Wire Working

The deal with CPi is this: their professional photographers take the beauty shots, exquisite pictures of the finished projects and variations. I’m responsible for the step-out pictures. Since I took all the photographs for my previously self-published books, I figured this would be manageable. Well, it was, but not without countless hours of working on the images in Photoshop and frequent re-shoots. It was the most difficult challenge of all to get images that would be up to the high standards set by this series of books.

I had three submission deadlines: Sept. 1, Nov. 30, and Feb. 27, with approximately 1/3 of the text, images and beaded objects due each time. Somehow, thanks to my husband, guest artists, the universe, and internal strength; I met each of the deadlines.

Bead Embroidery - Sampler of Stitches

The art log… Oh boy, that was another challenge. I gave every one of the 597 images and 80 beaded objects sent to CPi a unique number, recording it in the art log (an Excel document). Then I inserted these numbers into the manuscript, indicating placement of each picture within the text. In the end, the printed proof-sheet with each numbered image, the numbered objects, the art log and the manuscripts all have to match… exactly… no missing images, no images without a corresponding placement in the text. Yikes. Let me say, even for a fairly well-organized person, keeping track of everything was another huge challenge.

The final challenge was budget. Apparently the world economic situation is affecting book publishing too. In January, the editor informed me of cuts. Some titles were cut entirely. Thank goodness, mine was only cut in length. Although a few non-essentials had to go, the book remains true to my original concept and fully comprehensive.

Bead Weaving - Knitting with Beads

It’s complete! After 8 months of non-stop work, the final submission went to CPi by FedEx on time. Now it’s in their hands. Their book designers, editors, and photographers will build the layout of the book, edit my manuscript, design the cover, and make it all come true. According to the editor, I will have an opportunity to go over it again before they go to press. Then it will be printed, somewhere in Asia, bound and released late this year. My baby, my dream, my gift of bead love, will be on the shelves at last! Look for the this title: The Complete Photo Guide to Beading by Robin Atkins!

The pictures in this post are little sneak-peeks, parts of photos that will be in the book. I'll show you more later when the layout process is complete.

Bead Embroidery - Quilting with Beads

Are you wondering how it happened that the acquisition editor contacted me in the first place? I did, and so I asked her. She said she searched the internet for bead artists. One of the first things that came up was this blog, Beadlust. She scanned through it, noted my writing skills, noted that I take decent pictures, and noted on the side bar that I’ve written bead books previously. Then she went on to look at other search results, but said she kept thinking about what she’d seen on Beadlust and my website. In the end, I was at the top of her list. And since I said yes, the rest is history.

In this case, as in co-authoring with Amy Clarke (see Part 2, here), I got lucky. I didn’t seek a publisher; they came to me. Luck means being in the right place at the right time; it also means being true to your passion and being public with it in every way possible… teaching, networking, and the internet.

In the final installment (Part 5) of this series, I’ll list a few tips and conclusions about writing and publishing books. If you’ve considered writing a book, I hope these words will help you to give it a try!

Part 1 ~ Getting Started

Part 2 ~ A Dream Come True

Part 3 ~ Return to Self Publishing

Part 4 ~ Preparing a Book for Traditional Publishing

Part 5 ~ Book Writing Tips and Conclusions

Recognize this Bead????? Mystery Solved!

Anybody out there recognize this bead... how old? where made? (Click to enlarge!)
Answers revealed at end of this post.

Here's what I know about it:

1. made of transparent, medium blue glass
2. round in shape
   
3. about 14 mm in diameter
   
4. probably a lampwork bead, because I can see bits of what seems to be kiln slip in the hole
5. seemingly hand ground on the ends
6. seemingly hand engraved, carved or etched because the cut designs are slightly different on each of the 13 beads I have
7. at least 25 years old because that's how long I've had them
8. carved design (three circles on each bead) looks a little like the Chinese symbol for longevity
9. although I don't recall how (or from whom) they came into my possession, I do recall being told they were "vintage"
10. I think I was told they were "vintage Japanese," but am not sure about that

I need to know about these beads for a book I'm currently writing, especially how old they are and where they were made. Anybody know the answers? Educated guesses are OK. If you know somebody who might know, please pass the link to this post on to them. Thanks!


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Sept. 18, 2011 ~ Origins of mystery bead are revealed, thanks to Robert K Liu, founder and editor of Ornament Magazine, who wrote: These are lapidary-cut or ground Chinese Qing Dynasty beads, at most probably early 20th C.

Thanks to everyone who offered suggestions about who to contact, especially Beady Ann, who suggested contacting Dr. Liu.

Beading with World Beads ~ Giveaway!

What “world beads” do you have in your stash? You may have more than you think! Here are a few of mine…


We buy beads in a local bead shop or in the comfort of our own home computer. But where were they made? Where have they traveled before we found them?


The origins of beads, particularly those in my stash, has fascinated me since day-one of my beady career 24 years ago. Joining my local Bead Society, where most members had a collector’s perspective about beads, and attending early Bead Conferences, which were more about the history of beads than making things with them, I began to appreciate that beads are truly ubiquitous!


Did you know that beads are one of man’s earliest artifacts? It’s possible that beads predate vessels and primitive tools in many cultures. Did you know that men and women of nearly every society, every culture and every land since the beginning of mankind have made and used beads in one or more ways?


Beads, being small, portable, long-lasting and made from various, naturally-occurring substances, have been a trade commodity for many centuries. Thus they have traveled the world in the hands of traders and merchants, sometimes for centuries. They arrive in our stash, some new and some used, from far-away places around the world.


Just as groups like the Bead Journal Project and other internet-based beading groups unite people of the world, so do the beads themselves. More than anything else about beads, their ubiquitous nature fascinates me!


So too, the world-connection of beads intrigues Ray Hemachandra, editor of a book, recently published by Lark Books - Beading with World Beads, Beautiful Jewelry - Simple Techniques. This book features 30 jewelry projects with an international and multicultural flair created by 15 acclaimed jewelry designers.

Lark asked me to review several of their books and offered a signed copy of each one as a blog giveaway. And so, this is the first of my reviews. Someone who makes a comment on this post will win an autographed copy!


Those of you who know me, are aware that I’m not really a recipe type of gal with my art (or my cooking for that matter). For me, it is simply more fun to “do my own thing” than to replicate a design by somebody else. Consequently, I don’t gravitate toward “project books,” preferring technique or inspirational guides.

Happily, Beading with World Beads, gives so much more than projects! First, there’s the whole idea of beading as “a multicultural bonanza – a melting pot of craft practices that yields innovative combinations of materials and influences,” to quote editor, Hemachandra. I love this concept and how it is realized in the unique creations of the designers chosen for the book. All of the jewelry is appealing and mysterious because of the cultural roots found in the materials and designs.


The second thing I really like about this book is that all the projects are based on sound design principles. They are well-balanced (although not necessarily symmetrical) and the different beads used in each piece have relationship of scale, color, style and origin. So even if I choose not to replicate any of the projects, each is an inspiration to me and offers challenging ideas I can apply to my personal world bead stash in my own way.


Looking at the photos in Beading with World Beads makes me crave making jewelry again, makes me get out my African trade beads and view them as potential designs rather than a collection, makes me remember things in my stash long neglected! And by the way, the photos are outstanding, something I always admire about books published by Lark.

Lastly, I have to bravo the book for its clear, concise step-by-step instructions for each of the projects. For each project, excellent editing results in consistency and clarity that are rare in project books.

In conclusion, I give Beading with World Beads an enthusiastic two-thumbs-up!

Would you like to win an autographed copy on this blog giveaway? Yes? Then make a comment in the next 10 days. Just for fun, tell me about something you love in your world bead stash! To be eligible to win, you must give me a clear way to get in touch with you - phone, email or snail mail address. (BTW, it's safest to give your email this way: name[at]provider[dot]com. Use the [ ] signs and substitute the word at for @ and dot for .)