Skip to main content
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Monday:
11:00am–5:00pm
Tuesday:
Closed
Wednesday:
11:00am–5:00pm
Thursday:
11:00am–9:00pm
Friday:
11:00am–5:00pm
Saturday:
10:00am–5:00pm
Sunday:
10:00am–5:00pm

Utility

  • Gift Shop
  • Become a Member
  • Donate
  • Get Tickets

Get Tickets

Today's Hours: 11am – 5pm.

  • Visit
    • Prepare for Your Visit What you need to know before coming to the Museum.
    • While You're Here Make the most of your visit.
    • Tours Experience the Gardner Museum with a guided tour. Please request a tour in advance.
  • Exhibitions & Events
    • Exhibitions Explore our special exhibitions.
    • Seasonal Courtyard Displays Know what is blooming in the Courtyard.
    • Events Calendar Check out what is happening at the Museum.
  • Collection
    • Collection Search Search for and explore objects in Isabella’s collection.
    • Archives & Collection Research Documenting the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner and the Museum.
    • Inside the Collection Blog Stories about the collection and Isabella.
  • Artists & Community Programs
    • Artists-in-Residence Learn about our program that provides time, resources, and space at the Museum for the artistic community.
    • Educator Programs The Museum offers specialized training and resources for teachers.
    • Neighborhood Salon Luminaries Learn about our program in which Boston artists and cultural luminaries exchange creative ideas and dialogue.
  • Our Story
    • Meet Isabella Discover our Museum’s founder and learn more about her unconventional life.
    • Mission & Values Read about the Museum’s mission and values that continue to reflect the vision of our founder.
    • Isabella's Creative Legacy See how Isabella’s legacy lives on today.
    • The Theft Learn what happened at the Gardner Museum in the early hours of March 18, 1990.
  • Support the Museum
    • Membership Join our community and unlock year-round access to the Gardner.
    • Patron Program Experience a deeper connection to the Museum as a Friends of Fenway Court Patron.
    • Corporate Partnership Engage your company, clients, and employees with the Museum.
    • Annual Fund Give to the Museum to help preserve our collection and engage audiences with dynamic exhibitions and innovative programs.
    • Planned Giving Ensure the vitality of the Gardner for future generations.
    • Organizational Memberships Explore free or discounted admission for universities, libraries, and nonprofit institutions.
  • Gift Shop
  • Become a Member
  • Donate
  • Get Tickets
Search
Hand Prayer Wheel
19th century
Tibetan
Silver, turquoise, wood, shell, cloth, paper, and copper

Isabella Gardner bought a prayer wheel at a bazaar in Darjeeling where Bhutanese, Tibetans, and Lepdras came to sell goods. The following day, January 28, 1884, she saw worshippers at a Tibetan monastery walking around a pagoda using prayer wheels. These devices were only slowly becoming known in the West as a component of Tibetan Buddhist practice. With each movement of the wrist and turn of the wheel, a prayer or mantra (written numerous times on a roll of paper enclosed by a red cloth and the silver cylinder) is disseminated in the air, conferring religious merit on the bearer. The movement is fueled by a copper ball-and-chain governor connected to the center of the silver cylinder.

Hand prayer wheels (and similar devices driven by water, air, and even modern technologies) are used by Tibetans of all classes, and are called mani (jewel) wheels because they are associated with the Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, and his Six Syllables Mantra, “om mani padme hum,” which can be translated as “hail the jewel-lotus” or “hail to the jewel in the lotus.”1 This is also the mantra written in Tibetan on the roll enclosed in Isabella Gardner’s wheel.

Twelve turquoises (one is now missing), arranged in four groups, decorate a band that separates two openwork sections of the cylinder. Among the leafy decorations are the eight auspicious Buddhist symbols: in the upper band are the parasol, endless knot, canopy, and conch; in the lower band are the wheel, treasure vase, lotus flower, and golden fishes. The carved wooden handle is inlaid with small pieces of shell.

1 From the Sacred Realm: Treasures of Tibetan Art from the Newark Museum. Exh. cat. Newark Museum, 1999-2000. By Valrae Reynolds et al.: 55–56. For a different interpretation, see Dan Martin, "On the origin and significance of the prayer wheel according to two nineteenth-century Tibetan literary sources," Journal of the Tibet Society 7 (1987): 13-29.

Source: Pedro Moura Carvalho, “Jewelry and Objects from India,” in Journeys East: Isabella Stewart Gardner and Asia, edited by Alan Chong and Noriko Murai (Boston: ISGM and Gutenberg Periscope, 2009): 462-63.

Read More Read Less
Explore Object Details

25 Evans Way

Boston, MA 02115

Directions & Parking
Contact Press Room
Careers Event Rentals
Get Our Newsletter

The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum is a registered 501(c)(3) non-profit organization

Rights & Reproductions Privacy Policy

Your browser doesn't support audio.

00:00 / 00:00