The larger of our two young maples is now full scarlet, its branches a tall strong fire against the unrelieved gray of dawn. It rained all night, remnant effects of Hurricane Willa, the massive storm that slammed into Mexico’s northwest coast only yesterday morning. It is a revenant now, albeit a large one — a ghost storm that has decided to linger here for the day, if forecast and sky alike are to be believed.
In an ordinary year, October is not a time for rain. Snow, yes, in perhaps a brief powerful burst; although you wouldn’t know it by the preceding few years, it’s usually the month of our first snow, often a big one. But rain is so rare as to be nearly nonexistent. October here is the season when a perfect clarity of air and a sharply angled sun work their magic to produce the mysteriously beautiful golden light for which this place is known.
It makes this day’s featured work unusually apt — one built around the dusky red shades of autumn, manifest in a work named for the rain. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Red Flower Rain Cuff Bracelet
A monumental cabochon of red flower jasper serves as the focal point of this magnificent unisex cuff. The stone, a warm, earthy rose shade with a mulberry and charcoal matrix of dendritic wildflower blossoms, is set into an elevated scalloped bezel, trimmed with twisted silver, and accented with a tiny chatoyant tiger’s eye cabochon at one side. The cuff, wide and weighty, features a hand-stamped row of matched thunderhead symbols chased along the center of the band, flanked at either edge by a single row of thunderheads. The band itself tapers slightly at either end for a comfortable fit. In the inner band, morning stars and other celestial symbols are scattered like constellations tossed across the pre-dawn sky. Band is 1-11/16″ across, narrowing to 1-3/8″ at either end; the bezel is slightly wider, 1-7/8″ long by 1.25″ wide; the visible portion of the stone is 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ wide (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; red flower jasper
$1,550 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Its name comes from the stone, of course — red flower jasper. At this season, though, it might well have been called red leaf jasper, crimson and copper and scarlet against the gray-black of trunks and branches that will soon turn skeletal. A week from today is the Eve of All Souls, and by then, many of the trees will seem as ghostly as the spirits that walk abroad at night, searching for someone to remember them.
For today, though, we have rain: unseasonal, to be sure, but desperately needed after a year and more of sustained drought, and all the more welcome for that. And for the moment, in the maple, a last red fire burns bright before the winter dark returns.
~ Aji
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