On this first weekend of September, our world here is changing fast.
We awakened this morning to a heavy haze of smoke, wildfire source as yet unidentified. Despite yesterday’s hard heavy rain and the chill air that bookends each day, the bright hours remain as hot as July, and the careless use of fire likewise remains an exceptionally risky proposition. Still, new trees have begun to turn, and while most of the earth here is still lush, the green is now almost universally underlit with hints of gold.
It looks like the peridot anchor stones in today’s featured work: bright, intense summer hues shot through with ethereal autumn light. From its description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
A Prayer for All Life Earrings
There are times when survival requires resistance, requires a return to the old ways, requires faith and prayer and visions and dreams. With this pair of earrings, Wings has reconceived his eagle-feather series in new ways: a change of color, an addition of precious gems, greater labor in design and execution . . . and a symbolism suited to the whole world, a prayer for all life. Each eagle feather is roughly a mirror image of the other, but cut entirely free-hand, so that like their real-world counterparts, each preserves its own unique identity. Using a delicate jeweler’s chisel, Wings has scored each earring freehand, the lines forming a vaguely herringboned pattern at either side of the center shaft to create the hundreds of tiny barbs that make up each feather. In a first for this series, he has repeated the freehand barb pattern on the reverse of each drop. The shaft itself is an overlay of stamped thin silver wire, running up the length of each feather to wrap around the base of the shaft at the top. Four tiny round bezel-set cabochons of rich green jade in the color of the evergreens are scattered across the front to create the mottled pattern unique to eagle feathers: two on either side of the shaft on each earring, for a total of eight. The feathers themselves are anchored at the base of the shaft by brilliant grass-green ovals, a pair of stunning peridot cabochons lightly webbed with deep delicate lines of clear, glossy matrix. Together, they form a powerful pair of feathers in the color of life itself, powerful enough to send skyward a prayer for all life. Each is suspended from sterling silver wires. Earrings hang 2.5″ long (excluding wires) and are 9/16″ across at the widest point; the peridot cabochons are 3/8″ long by 1/4″ across (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver; peridot; jade
$875 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The days are now markedly shorter, the nights long and increasingly cold. The hot humid hours of midday are a snare, deflecting our awareness from the sharp chill edges of morning and night. Climate and weather here require forethought at this threshold season in the most ordinary of years; now, they demand our attention more insistently. For this is a time to plan, the make ready for much colder days to come, to prepare for a mercury plunging deep, for snows piling dense and high.
It is September, and the air still holds out the faint promise of summer, but it is now more a hope for the year to come than for tomorrow and its children. Fall here for much of each day, and has been; soon it will own the air and the winds entire until winter comes perforce to possess them for itself.
It is hard, as this hot, humid, hazy day fades slowly into twilight, to predict what autumn this year will bring: Last year, October was hotter than August; in years past, it has delivered a more typical early snow. In some years, November begins with nights well below zero, yet ends so deceptively warm that the aspens try to bud again in December.
This year’s predictions are for a hard winter. It’s hard to argue with the current signs, but we also know that climate change has altered our patterns to such a degree that the old indicators often no longer apply. For now, we must plan for any eventuality, and as we plan, it is a time to seek guidance: for ourselves, and for our world, a prayer before the fall.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
