A Bad Blue rosary

My quest to accumulate a few "bad" modern rosaries is having some nice results. My friend Joan (thanks, Joan!) stopped by the local St. Vincent de Paul charity shop and picked up a couple of the little plastic-and-nylon-cord rosaries for me, to add to my collection of rosaries NOT to use if you want to create a historically correct impression for the Middle Ages or Renaissance. They did not, after all, have plastic back then.

I've also been hoping to find a not too expensive modern rosary that demonstrates what I mean when I say that many modern rosaries have medals and crosses that shout "modern art!" Usually those come labeled "Art Nouveau" or "1950s" when someone has them for sale, and they're priced at collector's prices... in the $30 to $50 range.

However, I saw this one, bid on it and won -- and it's just what I was after:



The beads are plastic, and each one has an embossed image of Mary on it -- not totally tacky, I've seen worse, but the center piece (especially!) and cross are so excruciatingly typical of the 1960s that I hope people will get the point I'm trying to make in my classes.



Of course, probably what I should really be doing this month is getting more pages up on the main website, so I can point people to examples of what they should be looking for in a medieval or renaissance rosary, rather than examples of what they shouldn't. :) But that's not quite as much fun (wicked grin)!