Wednesday, May 18, 2005

My rosaries were in Kalamazoo...

This sounds like a feeble excuse for something, but it's actually something I want to toot my own horn about, just a bit (grin).

I couldn't be at the International Congress for Medieval Studies in Kalamazoo, Michigan this year (May 5-8), due to work commitments. However I'd been asked to send an exhibit of my rosary "teaching collection" (replicas of historical rosaries) for the Artisans Gallery reception on Friday night of the conference.

It took burning the midnight oil a few nights, but I succeeded in creating a couple of new rosaries and re-stringing one I already had with some new additions (I finally found some marker beads to go with the pomander). I also produced a "showbook" with pictures and explanation of the sources I used to make these replicas. All this got packed up and FedExed to the friend who'd agreed to take care of it for me (thanks, Danielle!). I think I made the FedEx pickup deadline with about an hour to spare :)

I knew I'd have to live up to the good placement my display would have, so I sent along a piece of black velveteen big enough to cover the whole table, as an appropriate "foil" for all the glittery stuff. The coordinator of the gallery says I was one of her "inspirations" for doing the gallery project in the first place, and she honored me by putting my display as #1 -- front and center, on the first table people saw as they walked in the door.

Distaff rosaries

I just got the first pictures back, and it was a great success! The gallery attracted over 400 enthusiastic people to see the displays of medieval shoes, clothes, a Viking loom, silk knitting, and more. The organizer's comment was that there was a truly amazing amount of talent packed into that room. I'm told there were always people at least two deep around the rosary display. I'll be interested to see the impact on my Web traffic :)

I'll be posting some more pictures as I get to it.