Ever More Saints
Every day of my life has been a blessing. Important to express that when writing about a garland of medals that’ve been with me throughout most of my life. About 10 years ago, I started to assemble what was an accumulation of souvenirs, confirmation gifts, and other religious medals that I saved in a cigar box since I was a child. As a jeweler, I thought about making my own precious versions of these—but as the years passed and I’d continue to revisit the box, I’d come away with an extraordinary feeling from handling them and decided they were already perfect.
When I started to connect them as one, my sister-in-law Tracy offered up a bag full of Saints (the matching silver ovals) that made the longer length possible and heartfelt.
The original layout of Ever More Saints before attaching it to the fine silver chain.
Detail of Ever More Saints after being transferred to the fine silver and pure gold chain.
Once I started, my dad continued to send me medals in the mail or hand me a bag of them at family functions. It was easy to keep collecting them, like stamps, and each one had a story. Suffice to say, it became a meditative addiction. To this day, the gift shops of churches or shrines are my happy place.
In 2018, the Metropolitan Museum of Art borrowed Ever More Saints for their Special Exhibition Gift Shop in celebration of Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination, an exhibition that was seen by an estimated 1,659,646 visitors. It remained on display over a five-month period.
Ever More Saints
Delivering Ever More Saints to The Met in 2018.
I dedicated Ever More Saints to my sister Nancy, who was killed in 2015. We had twin brains and we were spiritually linked. It took a long time for me to come out of shock. What’s really not weird to me is I never lost faith. In January 2015, Nancy was a medical esthetician embarking on a new career and was beginning her studies to further her medical career. About a month later, she was killed by a drunk driver. Nancy was 53 and I was 52. She had been through her own set of ordeals in life and was settling onto a bright path. So, the tragedy was of mythological levels of sadness. The garland is all about that. When you look at each saint and think about their lives, each one has a story of determination, darkness, and absolute brightness, and many of them end violently in blood.
Detail of Ever More Saints, featuring a 24-karat gold rose petal.
After Nancy’s death, I learned about the meaning of carrying my cross, and also about letting others help me carry my cross. I learned what the word mercy meant.
Ever More Saints is a garland, not a rosary, but it is connected with a beat to it. Ten rose petals are smithed of 24-karat gold (not leaf, not plate, not 14k; they are made of pure gold). The links of the chain measure 70” and are hand-fused in fine pure silver.
There are a total of 174 medals, including the Holy Doors medal that I got in Rome during a holy year, a Fatima medal engraved in Portuguese, a sterling antique engraved in Italian, and 44 ovals from Tracy.
There are several Saint Xavier Mother Cabrini medals; she was Nancy and my favorite—the patron saint of hospital workers, healers, and immigrants. Mother Cabrini, an Italian-American who founded the Missionary Sisters of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, was our grandmother Salvatrice’s favorite saint too because of her relatable life story as an Italian, “senza voce,” who immigrated to NYC in the early 1900s.
When I put my moisturizer on at night and blend it into my skin, I feel the mercy. Each tiny moment of goodness is a mercy, like breathing in and out or drinking a glass of water. I pray to these angels and saints all the time for world peace and for people to love each other. That’s all those saints ever wanted. That’s what Nancy wanted too.
I found this cross in Nancy’s 2015 school notebook.
“Prayerful Careful Driving Saves Lives.”
