Mother of pearl and agate paternoster.

So… first of all was the restring of the mother-of-pearl paternoster.  I put this one together at Pennsic last year, and it unfortunately broke the second time I wore it. Apparently I lost a few beads in the process, as it was originally 8 decades, and in this iteration, is only 7 decades. It’s strung on a 3-bowe fingerloop braid (I started at fingerloop.org for instructions, but in order to match the thread to the size of the bead holes, went here for a simpler, narrower option).

Bone and agate linear paternoster

The red silk is Soie d’Alger in color 944, the beads were bought at Pennsic and are all roughly 12mm – they’re a bit heavier than I’d like. Hopefully, since this paternoster is on a braided cord, it won’t break like the other one due to the weight.

The second paternoster is made from much smaller, antiqued bone beads (8mm) with the same agate gauds as the first paternoster, strung on splendor silk. This one is a linear one, instead of a circle – these seem to be a bit more common for men, and since this one is for Girard, I thought it would be a nice change.  The charm on the other end is from Fettered Cock pewters – while it’s technically a symbol of courtly love, and not precisely appropriate for a paternoster, it looks reasonable and doesn’t make me twitch. (I’m not Christian, though my persona of course is; for me paternosters with real religious symbols on them feel very disrespectful to wear. YMMV of course).

15 decade coral paternoster

Figure from the Tres Riches Heures

The last one of the group is the most fun though. I’ve been working on (slowly – I really need to embroider faster!) an outfit from the Tres Riches Heures. So I found some (admittedly dyed, admittedly probably plastic-stablized sponge coral, given the price) gorgeous red coral beads on ebay, and put this together. It’s strung on 4 strands of Soie Perlee, which is a gorgous, filament silk thread (also seen in the tassel). The white bead is carved bone – chosen mostly because it was the largest thing I could find in the size and color I wanted.

Oh – and a quick question. For those of you who already have paternosters like these (I know I’m late to the party), how do you store/transport them so the tassels don’t tangle? The filament silk doesn’t seem to be a problem, but the spun silk tassels (the red and green ones) seem really prone to getting messed up. (And apparently waste/spun silk WAS used for tassels, so that’s not the problem, except perhaps the part where I’m not wearing them all the time).