I knew last night by the aching in my joints that the weather was already changing. Even so, I was surprised to see the magnitude of the shift by dawn. The forecast was for snow to arrive late tonight, which, in practical terms, likely meant the early hours of Thursday morning, but for one of the peaks, the weather has already come . . . and gone again.
Unlike the last couple of days of clear unvarnished blue, on this day, the wide overhead expanse is painted in shades of gray, from dove and pewter and lead and violet. They are still illuminated skies: The sun still seeps through the veil, a roundish glow to the southeast, even as threads of gray trail past its face. Precious little blue is visible this morning, but a different blue will arrive later with the storm. For now, the gray possesses its own haunting beauty, a weaving of clouds to focus the light.
The absence of turquoise skies notwithstanding, it’s a fitting day for today’s featured work, one that catches and holds the very heavens themselves, refracting their greatest gift back to us. It’s a major work, too, one of Wings’s most significant, and most powerful, an honoring of tradition that reimagines its imagery for the world we face now. From its description in the Belts Gallery here on the site:
Illuminating Skies Concha Belt
Butterflies are small but powerful spirits, visionary and prophetic, who wing their way to our world across illuminating skies. Wings summons the spirit of Butterfly and of the skies it inhabits, across this silver and turquoise cascade of this traditional concha belt. Wrought in an old and archetypal style, it features twelve separate classic conchas separated by thirteen old-style “butterfly” conchas, with a pair of the latter flanking the buckle at either end. Each classic concha is cut and scalloped around the edges, entirely freehand; lightly domed, repoussé-fashion; and meticulously hand-stamped in a highly detailed traditional design of concentric ovals that repeats across each piece. The stampwork begins with hand-scored lines radiating outward into small sunrise symbols, all chased in a clockwise fashion around the inner oval. The next oval is formed of a flowering pattern separated by tiny hoops — three upward-reaching petals of light flanking small perfect orbs on either side, forming the last line of stampwork on the gently sloping domed portion of the concha. Where the doming ends to flare into the scalloped edge, Wings has detailed it with labor-intensive chasing, tiny accent marks creating perfect definition along the flowing line of the oval. Outward from the chased line, a larger sunrise symbol rises toward the edge of each petal-like scallop. At the center of each oval concha rests a small round cabochon of spiderweb turquoise, set in a plain low-profile bezel, each stone a shade of robin’s-egg blue matrixed with tiny coppery and inky blue-black lines, some with translucent wisps of spring green floating over the surface. The butterfly conchas are hand-stamped in a traditional flaring design, wings at top and bottom, their entire pleated surfaces domed, repoussé-fashion, to give them a three-dimensional appearance. The buckle is hand-scored inward from the edge to create a narrow border; inside the border, the center is hand-hammered with scores, perhaps hundreds, of tiny separate strikes of the jeweler’s hammer, then hand-scored outward from the center in a radiant motif. Along the outer border, tiny lodge symbols against a radiant sun repeat along all four sides, with slightly larger lodge symbols sitting solitary at each corner. At the buckle’s center rests an oval cabochon of beautiful robin’s-egg blue turquoise, probably from the Montezuma District, with a beautifully abstract matrix in bold coppery-red spiderwebbing. The belt itself is heavy brown-black leather, hand-cut, hand-split, hand-beveled along the edges, and hand-stamped down its entire length in a radiant sun motif. The belt is finished off with brown-black braided leather figure-eight ties that terminate in sterling silver tips with tiny globe-like ends. The belt is 52″ long and the leather strip is 11/16″ wide; the oval conchas are 2-1/16″ long by 1-7/8 inches high; the round center cabochons are 7/16″ across; the butterfly conchas are 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; the buckle is 2-5/16″ long by 1-3/4″ high; the oval center cabochon is 1″ long by 5/8″ high; the silver tips on the ties are 1-7/8″ long; the ties themselves are 7″ long (all dimensions approximate). Close-up views shown below.
Sterling silver; spiderwebbed blue turquoise (most likely from the Royston and Montezuma Districts)
$7,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Notes: Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply.
The leather belt is a standard length; a hand-made belt in a specialty size may be ordered
(either shorter or longer) for an additional $325 charge.
The temperature has risen some five degrees since dawn, and yet the air has grown colder, a product less of wind chill than of a permeating damp. The clouds are lowering fast now, and the scent of snow is upon the wind.
We had expected to have one more clear and sunny day before the next storm, one more day of unseasonal warmth in which to get things done. But the storm the experts expected to miss us entirely, a smaller, secondary system clustered last night over Baja, has instead shifted direction slightly. It will break the path today for the larger storm to follow overnight.
And even as the snowflakes spiral and the wind spreads its wings, we know that this is a far better outcome.
Illuminating skies are always with us; one need only how to read them. But in recent years, snow has been in increasingly short supply, and with it, a healthy earth the rest of the year.
So as the cold descends like a blanket, the storm wrapping us in its embrace, we welcome it, and we are grateful. Illumination, after all, is wisdom’s scout, and today, we live and work and walk beneath their gift, a weaving of clouds to focus the light.
~ 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.
