The day after the storm.
It was a lingering system, lasting here until yesterday evening, with a few tardy vagrant flurries flying well after dark. Today, the earth is white, the air blindingly bright.
And a new perfect blue is born of the snow, stretching to the four corners of the sky.
There are, of course, a few low-lying clouds, bands of fog that cling to the slopes but mostly fail to gain the peaks. Overhead, the sky holds that perfect clarity found only in winter, impossibly pure, impossibly cold, the kind that will deliver to us tonight a blanket beaded with a million stars and a mercury that plunges near zero.
A perfect day and sky, in other words, for today’s featured work, one that lifts its indigo blues above a solid band of silvery light., From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Four Corners of the Sky Ring
In some traditions, the people reckon their world by the four corners of the sky. Here, Wings has captured the image of such a world in microcosm: the hoop of the world holding up a perfect turquoise square of Southwest sky. The band is formed of two elegant strands of solid sterling silver triangle wire, soldered seamlessly together. At the center of the band, the bezel flares into a flat setting cut freehand in a square with softly rounded edges. The stone, cut and filed into a slightly smaller square, is left with a freeform surface that hints at the rolling movement of the heavens, traced with bits of black and gold-colored webbing like fine wisps of thundercloud. The band is 3/8″ wide; the setting, 1/4″ square; the stone, 3/8″ square (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a beautiful — and beautifully simple — work, one built around a stone from the same lot as the turquoise cabochons in the spectacular new cuff we featured here on Wednesday: the exact color of the high-desert sky, only lightly polished to produce a freeform surface rolling with gently textured waves, subtly powerful matrix points in chert and copper and pyrite like the cloud veil at sunset.
We have several inches of heavy wet snow on the ground, and while the sun will melt some of it, it will harden into ice soon enough. Tonight will be very cold, and the days are going to get much more difficult before the weather warms up enough to snow again next week. But all we need to do is step outside to feel the earth coming alive again, air clean and sky renewed.
A perfect new blue is born of the snow, and it reaches to the four corners . . . of the sky, and of our newly white world.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
