Oval Beads or Gauds

Our oval beads. Shapes are based on the c. 1500 gold rosary in the Victoria and Albert Museum adapted into pewter.

The fancy rosary in the gallery image is an interpretation of the “rosary of the penitent knight”, using these oval beads as the fifty beads for counting Ave Marias. The story comes from Alanus de Rupe’s Unser lieben frauen psalter, printed in 1483. Briefly, a penitent knight was instructed by St. Dominic to use a rosary with five large beads of different colors that stand for different important religious concepts – his sins, the Last Judgement, the joy of the saints, and so on. For an excellent article on this passage, see Chris Laning’s Paternosters blog.