Rosaries with heart and style
Some rosaries shimmer from rearview mirrors and hands clasped in prayer. Ive Portals hopes her rosaries shine close to the heart, too.
“I want the person to wear that rosary (and to) use it,” said Portals, 50, a self-described late bloomer who makes and markets her own artisan Catholic rosaries in San Antonio. “The purpose is to use it as a statement. Showcase it, get it out into the community. Bring that rosary out and be proud of it.”
Since 2013, Portals has strung together countless stone and glass beads with metal crucifixes and pendants, transforming a centuries-old instrument of prayer into fine jewelry for the faithful. The result is Prayer Love Share Rosary, a biannual release of Portals’ handmade rosaries, which she sells at Homestead Handcrafts on the city’s far North Side.
Portals also sells antique furniture and other artists’ handbags and paintings. But it’s her own rosaries that have the most devout following by far, even beyond the Catholic community.
“Every time I wear mine at my church and even around, people are always commenting on it and asking me where I got it,” Homestead owner Lisa Neubauer said. “(And) I’m Lutheran.”
Portals’ rosaries do stand out from the typical pieces found in church gift shops. They often are made with more exotic bead materials, such as amethyst, jade and onyx. Neubauer likens them to vintage jewelry, noting that many buyers wear them as well as drape them over bibles or caskets for weddings or funerals.
Portals refers to her rosaries as wearable art designed to promote love and prayer. And as the Archdiocese of San Antonio said in a statement about such handmade works, any rosary that looks and feels attractive to its user helps it serve as a call to prayer.
The rosaries are just as uplifting for Portals as they are for her buyers.
“It’s a therapy process,” she said, “even for the maker.”
A wife and mother of three sons, Portals started making rosaries six years ago when she settled with her husband, Francisco, in San Antonio. While contemplating a new hobby, the memory of a fancy rosary from a photograph she saw 20 years ago beamed back to her mind. So she fired up a YouTube video on how to make a rosary.
Portals studied every facet of the rosary’s construction. The “decades,” or clusters of 10 small beads, each dedicated to praying the Hail Mary. The five larger beads for praying each Mystery of the Rosary. The anchoring crucifix for the sign of the cross and Apostles’ Creed. Then she ordered some beads online and got to crafting.
At first, Portals made rosaries just for herself, a quiet exercise she still conducts late at night at a dining table near her kitchen. Then she started giving her handmade rosaries to friends and neighbors. When they encouraged her to sell her work, Portals crafted three special large rosaries for retail — and didn’t sell a single one.
Portals said looking back at those rosaries, which she still has with the price tags, she couldn’t help but feel something was missing from them. The missing element, she decided, was inspiration — divine or otherwise.
Portals said it just didn’t feel right ordering her rosary beads online, so she switched to handpicking beads from small vendors in San Antonio, as well as from her travels across the country and to her family’s home in Puerto Rico. To this day, she rolls every bead in her fingers to make sure it feels just right for praying the Rosary. She also applies that same hands-on approach to her rosary crucifixes and pendants, which she said have to be made in Italy for their craftsmanship.
Then there’s a rosary prayer that goes beyond the Rosary.
“You know that people say, ‘I’m going to pray for you?’ ” Portals said. “During that time that I’m putting the beads, I’m thinking about it. I do a prayer or remember someone who has a situation.”
Most of the time Portals has no idea who buys her rosaries, though she’s had a face or two in mind when it comes to the occasional commission for a custom rosary. For instance, she once made a rosary for a couple’s 50th wedding anniversary, mixing different birthstones for each of their five children for the rosary’s five decades.
Like a fashion house, Portals releases her rosaries as fall and spring collections. Her fall works tend to bear darker browns and earth tones as well as blacks for funerals, and her spring pieces shine with brighter colors and whites for baptisms, first communions and weddings. She also makes rosaries for specific individuals and occasions, such as the pink-beaded rosary she made for cancer survivors.
She’s so particular about each design that she’ll even factor how the beads feel in the hand during certain times of year, such as opting for cool jasper beads for rosaries to be used in summer.
Since she works on her rosaries only late at night for just a couple of hours, Portals figures she averages 10 a week.
Portals’ handmade rosaries range from $25 to $85 for custom orders, with many between $35 and $55.
“I always try to price it to the point that people buy it,” she said. “It’s a lot of time involved and a lot of materials … (But this) is my way to give back.”
Portals said she feels no pressure to sell her rosaries, just a passion to keep making them. Though she’d consider it a blessing if she were to see one beyond the driver’s seat or church pew.
“Not a fashion statement,” Portals said, “but that people wear it in a beautiful way.”