This day has dawned in the glow of the dust light, cool dry air ashimmer with the haze of dirt and pollen and a little remnant smoke from old fires to the west. Even the new spiderwebs stretching from post to deck glimmer like strands of silver in the sun.
Such beauty won’t last long, of course, without rain. The current forecasts suggests that the summer monsoons remain some weeks distant yet. But for the moment, our small world here is warm and green and glowing with the sun’s golden radiance.
It’s a reminder to appreciate the elemental beauty here in real time, to honor it as it manifests rather than waste our energies in worrying about what we don’t have. After all, as the description for today’s featured work notes at the outset, we live in a world of braided suns, keeping our earth still spinning properly on its axis in all seasons.
And it’s not merely the hoop of the seasons that are bound so perfectly together. Here, perhaps more than most places, the links between the elemental spirits are both obvious and perceptible in real time, a braiding of earth and light.
Today’s featured work captures these connections in ethereal form. It’s one of my favorites, the silver solid and substantial, the stampwork impossibly deep and fine and true. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Braided Suns Cuff Bracelet
We live in a world of braided suns, a sacred hoop of the seasons strung around orbs of golden light. Wings honors the sun in all its angles and phases with this cuff, heavy nine-gauge sterling silver annealed to a velvety finish, hand-stamped in arcing conjoined sunrise patterns set opposite each other to form braids of light. Round tiger’s eye cabochons, brilliantly chatoyant and infused with rich color gradients from deep bronzed brown to bright yellow gold, are set into saw-toothed bezels equidistant along the band’s length, a sun for each season in varying shades of dark and light. The edges of the band are hand-filed silky-smooth, and the inner band is adorned with arced sunrises chased along either edge, then linked across the band’s expanse by diagonal shafts of light erupting at the center in flowering radiance, the flowing lines all hand-struck to be meticulously equidistant and at identical angles. The band is 6.5″ long by 3/8″ across; the cabochons are 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Views of sides and inner band shown below.
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$1,475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
As is so often the case with Wings’s work, this one is braided not just on the outer, visible surface, but along the inner band, too, a secret braid shared only between bracelet and wearer. that stampwork, too, is just as impossibly fine and regular as that on the outer band, just as full of the imagery of flowering light.
It’s a perfect piece for this time of year here, when sun and earth alike share the same rich shades of gold and brown, a gift of land and light and trickster winds.
It’s a wind that we can see just rising now as the aspen leaves tremble and dance. The haze still hangs low before the faces of the peaks, creating the impression that we sit in an embrace of shimmering light.
And the land awaits planting, ready to be seeded in the week to come.
These are the days of a braiding of earth and light: in the face of the dangers outside, a reminder that our world still finds balance. It’s up to us to keep it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
