#prayer nut

[didoofcarthage]

Prayer Nut with the Nativity and the Adoration of the Magi, attributed to the workshop of Adam Dircksz

Netherlandish, c. 1500-1530

boxwood, silver, and gold

Rijksmuseum 

[sundustcloset]

Prayer nut, set in silver bands with foliate rosettes anonymous, 1500-1549, Rijksmuseum. Prayer nut, set in silver bands with foliate rosettes. A rotating spindle runs through the main shaft, around which a parchment leaf is wrapped, inscribed with the Ten Commandments.

*~ An incredibly precious encasement i stumbled across while (intensely, haha) perusing the silver collection in the Rijksmuseum.

I also find this small abstract from the wikipedia page on prayer nuts informative and poetic.

"The beads are quite uniform in size and shape, often with a diameter ranging from around 30 to 65 millimetres. Suda notes how their "spiritual impact...[was] curiously...in inverse proportion to their size". They were often made as two half-shells that could be opened to reveal intricate interior detail. According to the art historian Dora Thornton, when the prayer nut was opened out, it "revealed the representation of the divine hidden inside."

The interiors range considerably in complexity and detail, with the more simple consisting of a low relief cut into a disc that has been rounded off at the back. At their most detailed and complex, Suda describes how the beads "played out like a grand opera on a miniature stage, complete with exotic costumes, elaborate props and animals large and small" and observes how they have an "Alice in Wonderland" quality, wherein "one tumbles headlong into the tiny world created by the carver...into the world they reveal beyond one's immediate surroundings."

The shape of a prayer nut likely carried deep significance; with the outer sheath representing Christ's human flesh; the bead stand, his cross; and the interior reliefs, his divinity. According to Thornton, "unfolding the nut is in itself an act of prayer, like opening up a personal illuminated prayer book, or watching the leaves of a large scale altarpiece being hinged back in a church service".