A Rose-filled Rosary for Neriede - when special effort matters to the customer

For beaders and jewelry designers who market our designs through our own stores, the work of running the business often subsumes the craft that we so wanted to be our livelihood. Every so often I get to step back from the work of my silver jewelry store and turn to a custom project. For some special requests, it's a given that the way you treat your customer will have a huge impact in the outcome of the project, and in turn, on your future business.

The last part of this week, I set about making a rosary for a lady named Neriede, the mother of a dear friend. Neriede is in long-term hospital care and has sought daily solace in praying the rosary. I decided to make this beloved lady a rosary entirely her own - designed for her, expressly for her use during the arduous process of recovering her health.

I enjoy making rosaries because of the challenge of being creative within the beautiful form of the traditional design. The first step was choosing the findings and beads. Most beaders base their designs on a color scheme. Because I work with natural stones, I wanted to learn what semiprecious gems Neriede likes. Her son Mike and I first agreed on garnet and I went to Thunderbird Jewelry Supply's web catalog to get some idea of the natural beads they would have available in their Albuquerque showroom. I wanted to match the garnets with a red floral lampwork bead, and priced a few options to narrow down in person. This general scheme seemed really workable around a large, elegant scrolled crucifix and an open centerpiece showing Mary wreathed in stars.

When I arrived in the showroom the next day, things changed. Mike had agreed that garnets were the way to go, but as I shopped the real selection I found that the garnet beads in stock were beautiful, but weren't as I'd envisioned. Moreover, none of the glass beads would match garnet. I went for my cellphone to ask Mike if a different stone was okay, but found that I hadn't saved his number. Instead, I went with my intuition and picked up 6 mm rose quartz beads for the Hail Marys, with a larger dark pink glass bead containing soft pink roses to frame the decades. Of course - sort of like making a rosary with real rose-petal beads, I would just focus on a rose theme! Again, the little voice told me that Nereide would enjoy the femininity and elegance of the roses, so I picked up the crucifix and centerpiece and headed home to do the real work.

I keep a decent stock of silver findings on hand for the designs that I sell through my silver jewelry store, so I decided to make the bead links myself out of wire instead of using the slightly more costly shortcut of head pins. For the chain section, I used an unusual, hammered-finish chain that provided a sparkling accent and whose large links balanced the very large Pater Noster beads and the comparatively small rose quartz.

At a good stopping point for the evening, the project sat in it's bead tray while I turned out all the lights. Snapping off the last lamp, I was surprised to see the large glass beads glowing in the dark! What looked in the light like a simple pattern of pale green leaves around the rose motif was done in phosphorescent material, and the effect was as far from a glow stick as it could be - serene, lovely, and well - shining in the darkness. Though a hospital room is rarely very dark, the idea of this rosary glowing gently for Neriede sent me to bed smiling.

Saturday morning I finished up the rosary. It came together astonishingly quickly. Rosaries are usually labor-intensive projects, and the rosy rosary was quite large, but my total labor - not counting shopping for parts, but including measuring and nipping off the 59 wire links - was only around five hours. To someone with arthritis in her hands (I know you hear me, beaders!) the comparitive brevity of this project was yet another surprise blessing. I took some rough photos of the project and sent them to Mike as a preview, then I lay the rosary into an elegant floral-print presentation box I'd selected for it - my normal, red-clay Crucible Springs brand boxes were just not right in this case - and signed a personal card for Neriede.

Mike was ecstatic about the initial photos and offered to pick up his mom's rosary over Sunday lunch - his treat. After lunch he took the rosary to the hospital where Neriede is staying. I didn't catch any pictures good enough to showcase on my store site, but Neriede's smile was worth much more than the extra touches I put into her rosary.

Wearing someone else's jewelry

Last weekend we had family over to celebrate my son's second birthday. One lady in my husband's family, Jana, is originally from Illinois but has been in New Mexico for several years now. Jana asked to see my online store's inventory. As we went through the amber, garnets, fossils, shell, and loads of sterling, she remarked on the collection's departure from stereotypically "New Mexico" jewelry. (She had in mind the silver jewelry that is often turned out in mass quantities and sold at popular tourist attractions to appeal to popular ideas of "Indian jewelry.") I explained that part of my business plan is to use future capital to invest in local silversmiths, including those who bring modern, progressive elements into traditional Native American jewelry.

Then, because we were on the subject, I brought out my heirloom jewelry. Most of the valuable jewelry that my mom has passed on to me is antique Navajo work. The "crown" in my personal collection is a large squash blossom necklace made in the 1950's. It deserves it's own blog entry so I won't describe it here. Jana asked a lot of relevant questions about care and cleaning of a piece like that and then asked me, "Do you wear it?" I said that I do; like Jay Leno with his cars, I think that cool old stuff should be used for it's intended purpose.

Not wanting to sound dumb, Jana explained her lack of knowledge; she's always avoided Native American jewelry because "I never wanted to be one of those women who comes to New Mexico and drapes themselves in silver jewelry and broomstick skirts."

I agreed that such an artificial, cultivated image is ethnocentric and offensive ("Oooh! Isn't that exotic!" No. It's somebody else's lifestyle, or what we label "culture," and some people's lifestyles emphasize beauty and artistic expression. Vicarious identification with what you find "exotic" is not a celebration of that beauty.) And in the next breath, I found myself wondering how exactly I come off to others when I wear a squash blossom necklace that's bigger than my bra. Because, let's face it, at first glance you can easily categorize me as your average white chick.

This actually upset me a little. When I wear my necklace, no one knows that I'm not one of those wealthy, mostly non-Native collectors who think that it's cool to pay the market value of a used car for a piece of somebody else's culture - which ironically was probably produced for sale to a tourist or collector market in the first place.

So what's the difference between draping yourself in somebody else's jewelry and successfully wearing a really great traditional piece from outside your culture?

I think the answer has mostly to do with how well your overall personal image is put together. One reason so many of us collect jewelry is because fashion in clothing reflects a fairly narrow range of choices. For better or worse, that's the nature of fashion; you're identifying your appearance with that of people who know what looks best, or at least tell us they do. Furthermore, if I identify with the appearance of people in my own culture, that's fashion, but if I identify with the appearance of another culture, it's a costume - at best.

Jewelry gives us a lot of room to embellish within that realm of social identification. A successful personal image comes together when you strike that balance between who you are in your society, what looks good on your body type, and your authentic self. As a degreed technical writer in America working for an international science project, and a fairly athletic woman, I could wear a good suit and balance those first two parts of successful image. My - for instance - bracelet by an Alamo Navajo silversmith would then say "I really like cool bracelets." That's a lot different than trying to wear my idea of Alamo Navajo traditional dress, which would say, "I have a schizoid personality disorder."

Lest I sound like I'm only picking on people who wish they were Native American, let me ask you to take a close look at the current trend of Balinese and Hill Tribe silver jewelry. It's beautiful work, but my point applies to the ladies who walk around in batik pants and massive silver bead necklaces and who have only been as close to Bali as San Francisco.

It's like your parents told you when you were a teenager. It's okay to wear what the cool kids are wearing, but remember to be yourself. Please, please don't let your identity crisis cast it's glare onto someone else's traditional jewelry.