Yesterday’s “storm” was no more than a dusting, but the winds that followed were gale-force with a scalpels’ edge. Today, the air is much calmer, but the forecast suggests a new storm for this night, late and fast-moving.
We cannot afford not to welcome it; there is, after all, a direct line from the falling flakes of winter to the pooled and running waters of summer.
Because snow is water, given crystalline shape and a fragile solidity — flakes frozen and feathered into the waters of winter. In a good year, we see precious little of it in its liquid form now; at this moment, ditches and pond are lined with a dry and powdery white. Such pools as exist now are mostly rimed on the surface with ice cracking in sunlight, then refreezing at night, sherds and splinters of winter medicine fracturing into a cold crystalline geometry.
Today’s featured work reflects that same geometry in the shades of a warmer season — blue skies and green earth instead of ice and light. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
From the Waters Ring
Some of the old stories tell how our earth emerged from the waters, and the people with it. With this ring, Wings has crafted an image in miniature of Turtle Island, amidst other land masses, arising with its own seas out of the shimmering silver waters of the underworld. The ring is formed of a single wide band of solid sterling silver, hand-texturized by hundreds of strikes of a jeweler’s hammer, with a lip as slender as a silver thread raised at either edge. At the center, set in a spare low-profile bezel, rests a stunning round cabochon of spiderweb turquoise (likely from the Royston or Fox mining districts of Nevada), blues a mix of robin’s-egg and sky, with twin matrices of mossy green patches and fine inky purple spiderwebbing, evoking the continents rising from the seas in a massive tectonic shift. The band is a half-inch wide; the cabochon is 7/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Side and underside views shown below.
Sterling silver; blue-green turquoise (likely Royston or Fox)
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This ring, with its stunning small world emerging from shimmering silver light, has long been one of my favorites — both for the stories it embodies and its appearance of our earth in simulacrum, a miracle of our cosmologies. The materials are flawless, a perfect silver band, perfectly hammered, adorned with only the fine webbing of a literal jeweled hemisphere, turquoise waters and sky spangled with lush green and an inky solid land.
And its beauty reminds us, in the midst of icy gales and bitter winds, what this world with which the spirits have blessed us truly is: warm, rich, fertile . . . and birthed by the snows of winter in a cold crystalline geometry.
~ 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.
