Heartwood is the oldest part of the tree — the part that holds it up

Heartwood Rosaries began at a kitchen bench in Melbourne with a box of timber offcuts and a rosary that had come apart. The first beads were turned to replace the ones that were lost. The second set were turned because the first felt so good in the hand that it seemed wrong to stop.

Most rosaries are made from glass, plastic or imported hardwood. We wanted something that belonged to this place: timbers with names people recognise — Blackwood, Jarrah, Huon Pine, Red Gum — from forests they have walked in and tables they have eaten at. A rosary that smells faintly of the tree it came from.

Why timber

Timber is warm. It takes on the temperature of your hand within a decade of prayer. It wears — the beads you touch most often grow smoother and darker, and after years the rosary carries a record of its use. And it is alive in a way that glass is not: the grain in each bead was laid down season by season over a life much longer than ours.

The Rosary, though clearly Marian in character, is at heart a Christocentric prayer.

St John Paul II, Rosarium Virginis Mariae, 1

How we work

Every rosary is made to order or in small batches by hand. We source timber from sawmills and salvage yards rather than from new logging where a species is under pressure, and we keep the offcuts — a Huon Pine bead can be turned from a piece too small for anything else.

If a rosary ever breaks, send it back and we will restring it. That is not a warranty so much as an expectation: these are meant to be used hard, carried in pockets, and handed on.