Our world here is covered in a haze of smoke. We are granted the spectacle of red skies at night from a source more deadly than any stormy sunset; gray-gold in the morning, a warning not to sailors but to those whose airways are impaired.
Today, though, the clouds are hard at work, building towers that rise above the dirty particulate band that clings to the lower atmosphere on all sides. Supposedly there will be no rain until Monday, but the thunderheads are closing ranks now on all sides. There is water waiting to fall from the four corners of the sky, and there is no harm in praying that it finds its way to us.
At the moment, the only part of the heavens that approaches anything close to “clear” is that portion directly overhead: a blend of cornflower and turquoise, the blues of high desert and prairie that create the shade we’ve come to call “sky.” Before the day is out, we shall have a whole sky in the blues of the water.
Today’s featured work embodies that whole sky, but one still clear and bright, in which the water has not yet become rain. 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
Among the rings in Wings’s current inventory, the stone in this one has long been one of my favorites: rolling, textured, brilliant and full of depth and motion. It looks like our skies on a clear day, electric and adrift on the wind, yet ready at a moment’s notice to embrace any accumulating clouds and deliver them of their burden.
If current conditions are any indication, the sky blue shades currently overhead won’t last through the afternoon. Despite the essential beauty of the color, on this day, we’d rather have the gray-blues of the rain. And if the clouds hold true, we may be granted that fierce oddity of the monsoonal season: a whole sky in the blues of the water, rain from those four corners.
~ 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.
