Immaculate Conception - an image

From a Friend.

Subject: The Immaculate Conception - an image

You know that I have written before of the special place in my life that is held by Our Lady.
In 1986, on Edith's way home from town, she passed a run down "antique" shop sign advertising merchandise in a cellar of a house near the bus station. Curiosity succeeding, she went down the stairs to the room which looked to be a store room. Navigating her way between the objects, she saw on the floor, upside down, beneath a bench, a curious oval frame with a bowed glass front, within which amongst the cobwebs she thought she could make out the figure of Our Lady. "It is reserved", was the cold answer (no doubt to give the owner chance to think of a price she could exact from a well-dressed lady). Edith called again, and again, and adding the persuasion of her wish to buy it as a gift for her husband, obtained it (for £25, which was a lot of money).
I very gingerly opened the frame and cleaned the statuette, brushed down the velvet backing, black-ink dyed the frame, and restored it. You can imagine my excitement as the inscription within the scroll around the base revealed, "Souvenir du Decembre 1854". The plaster statuette, measuring eight inches in height, is marked/signed "Mattei". I just want to share this with you on the Feast Day of The Immaculate Conception (photograph attached). The second photograph shows where it hangs in my room, in my prayer corner (the photograph also shows the Chalice of Nunraw wood that Br Patrick turned exquisitely for me).
This feast is truly Our Lady's Day.
Yours . . . William

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