It’s mid-June and my roses are in bloom. After some much needed heavy rains, they’ve burst open, bringing heart opening joy every time I see them. One of the things I love to do with these beauties is to make rose beads. I first tried this eight years ago, in 2018, when a dear friend of mine, Sabrina, was nearing her dying time.
She and I were exploring together our relationship with Mary, being drawn to Her and to the rosary. Also being plant people, when I came upon a bit of information somewhere that rosaries were once made with rose petals, ground and cured into a clay in a cast iron pot of some kind. I decided to experiment, and the first set of beads ended up as a set of prayer beads for my friend, a gift she chose to wear when she was buried. I hold these last times with her, and the memory of her wanting to take them with her close.
Here is a picture of my first rosary I made, with some of the beads I made at the same time as her’s.
I have only ever done this with fresh roses. While there are many ways of making rose beads, I chose, and continue to choose to ‘cure’ or ‘ferment’ them in a cast iron vessel. Some people cook them, but i haven’t done it that way. I wanted to preserve the smell as much as possible, and know from others having done it this way that in cooking them, the ephemeral smell can be dissipated.
I don’t have tons of roses at this point, so I collect them over days, sometimes weeks depending on the year. This year I started with an ounce of petals (that’s what I had, not a required amount), and ground them in a mortar and pestle until as fine as possible and they stuck together in a ball. This I then placed in a small cast iron frying pan and covered with a bowl to keep bugs out and to prevent it from drying out.
The cast iron pan is not necessary, but I like the blackened colour of the finished beads. I suspect also there is some alchemical interplay between the rose and iron, adding some element of preservation on the practical side, but also the dynamic interplay of rose and iron. I would welcome your musings on this.
I give it a squeeze every day, this encourages the ‘clay’ to develop, keeps it from drying out and developing potential surface mold (or mold throughout). Over the days/weeks the roses will coalesce into a clay, often this takes a few weeks for me, mostly because I’m adding into it more petals, so I’m not sure how long it might actually take if you did it all in one go. The roses will break down further with time. My marker for it being finished is that the clay is an even texture (the more even the ‘clay’, the more even your finished dried beads will be, as when they dry, all the variation of texture shows up more) and shows the inside of your palm print after gripping it. It feels like a clay.
Here’s a link to the video I used initially to learn to do this:
Please leave comments and/or questions below! They are most welcome and appreciated (and help me with the details that might help those wanting to give it a go!)