The air is hazy today, skies a dirty yellow-gray. A little of it may be cloud cover, but of so, it’s minuscule. No, these skies are the result of the toxic pall of wildfire smoke that has swept in once again to settle over the land. There is blue to be seen, but you have to look up, directly overhead, to find it.
There is an eerie quality to the land now, as though the yellow haze conceals other things from view: an earth and sky haunted by spirits abroad too soon, pandemic ghosts and those of the migratory birds’ mass dying alike. It is a world that seems filled with dangers seen and unseen both, all the more jarring now because this would normally be a time of impending celebration.
It’s hard to find solace now, or even reassurance. There is none to be had from the colonial world’s so-called “leadership,” certainly, but we know better than to expect it from that quarter. Now, thanks to their half-millennium of toxic violence, the very air itself is filled with poisons, and there is no relief to be found even from earth or sky.
In times such as these, we have learned to dig deep. We know, from an eternity of ancestral history, that the answers are often found in places hidden from touch or sound or sight, in the spaces between worlds filled by memory and prophecy, visions and dreams: spaces filled with a love ancient and eternal, a love that holds all of our worlds as one.
It’s a love both embodied and manifest in today’s featured masterwork, a personal favorite that crosses cultural lines of Indigeneity, and of land and water and sky, to bring the spirits of this world’s children together in a single embrace. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
A Love Ancient and Eternal Necklace
The gifts of this indigenous earth are jewels beyond price, symbols of an ancient and eternal love. Wings honors the love, the gifts, and the example set for us with this necklace, wrought in the oldest of gems wrapped in the embrace of precious metal in the shade of the light. The work is built around a pendant of extraordinary proportions, an outsized heart cut freehand and set at the center with a total of sixteen gems. The focal point is a giant heart-shaped cabochon of Turkish colla wood, a rare and ancient fossilized wood spangled over time on a geologic scale with inclusions of its namesake, opalized chrysocolla, along with azurite and malachite, set here into a scalloped bezel. This luminous center is embraced by a ring of round bezel-set cabochons separated by tiny hand-stamped hoops, seven each of alternating blood-red carnelian and fiery amber with a single ethereal aquamarine, like tiny dawn sky, at the very tip. The pendant hangs from a flared slider-style bezel chased down its center in a repeating pattern of stylized hearts. It hangs from a chunky strand of textured beads strung on three-ply silver-plated foxtail: at the center, hand-carved oval ebony wood separated first by carnelian rondels, then slender amber chips; moving upward, Labradorite rondels alternating with pairs of spiky hand-textured ebony cylinders separated by oval ebony spacers; at the upper half, jet barrel beads alternating with segments of very old green turquoise doughnut rondels, followed by sterling silver-plated round spacers flowing into lengths of round chatoyant kyanite and smaller, intensely-hued indigo apatite. The strand is anchored by oversized sterling silver hook-and-eye findings. Including the bail, the pendant is 2-11/16″ long; the pendant alone is 2″ long from highest to lowest points by 1-7/8″ across at the widest point; the bail is 7/8″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point; the colla wood heart cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-7/16″ across at the widest point; the smaller cabochons are each 3/16″ across; the bead strand, excluding findings, is 20″ long (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown below.
Pendant: Sterling silver; Turkish colla wood; aquamarine; amber; carnelian
Bead Strand: Hand-carved African ebony; carnelian; amber; Labradorite; jet;
old green turquoise; silverplate; kyanite; apatite; all over tri-ply silver-plated foxtail.
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s not as though such a work will put out the fires and chase the smoke away; it cannot inoculate the world against pandemic, nor force a change in leadership.
But it reminds us of what can do those things, and perhaps inspires us, instills us with the courage that we must find within ourselves to make it happen. It reminds us that we are people of strong hearts and brave spirits, people for whom love is not mere words, but action. And it reminds us, too, reassures us, even, that there are no lines that can separate us from it, not borders of land or the bounds of memory, not the barriers between this tangible world and those of dreams and visions and prophecy.
This is a love that holds all our worlds as one, and we must seek it, find it, act upon it now.
~ 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.
