Via Crucis Triptych

All the items I've been ordering online lately, and here's yet another that arrived the other day. It's a small triptych, with the stations of the cross on it. Via crucis. The way of the cross. O crux ave, spes unica!

Small, only about 4½ inches tall. Black leather, with embossed panels of oxidized silver. Gold trim. It unfolds to stand on a tabletop, or you can fold it up to just about the shape and size of a billfold. Literally pocket sized, and exquisite workmanship.


This is another one of those items that is so wondrously low-tech, and just such a funky idea. I mean, who would ever have thought of such an item? But once you think of it, it seems like a natural. And timeless: I can almost imagine some English merchant, some Italian noble, some German hawksman, carrying it with him circa 1597.