A rosary maker and an artist are preserving life’s most meaningful moments — one handcrafted piece at a time
June 2026 WCVB 5Flowers fade, but the memories tied to them do not have to. Melissa Barbieri has been running Rosaries Inc. in Tewksbury since her parents retired in 2015, but the business’s roots go back nearly five decades. Her mother, Pauline, launched the business 47 years ago after learning the craft from nuns in Haverhill, Mass. “The blessed mother meant for me to do this,” Pauline used to say. Now, Melissa says she feels the same pull. The process is painstaking: flowers are dried, ground into a fine powder, rolled into beads by hand, pinned, cured and assembled. One rosary takes about three months to complete. Most are made from funeral flowers, though weddings, baptisms and engagements are also commemorated. “We’ve been told it’s worth the wait,” Barbieri said. Meanwhile, Yetha Ngwenya found her own way to hold onto flowers — and her late mother — through handcrafted paper blooms. She lost her mother at 19 and turned grief into art, layering five petals into each flower. “It felt like it was my mom at the bottom and my four sisters on top,” she said. “She’s, like, holding her girls.” The paper flowers, made from custom-designed stock paper, take shape on canvas. Ngwenya sells her art and teaches others how to make it through her business, Precisely Embellished. “There’s beauty at the end of hardship,” Ngwenya said.