A little cooler today, but what would otherwise have been a near-perfect autumn day was significantly adulterated by a heavy pall of smoke. It’s coming from prescribed burns in the area, but the fact that they are [presumably; we now know all too well it’s not a given] under control does nothing to mitigate the miasma that settled over the valley in the early hours of this morning.
It’s not just a matter of inconvenience; it’s not healthy for anyone forced to be out of doors. Even inside, my eyes itch and burn; I was kept awake all night by multiple sneezing its, part of a larger allergy attack; I can feel that my airway is extremely inflamed. I’ve probably used my inhaler more in recent days than in the whole rest of the year combined, and that’s not good, either.
And by midday, the wind was rising again, shifting direction; what had cleared some of the smoke out at morning’s end seemed poised to return it all to us in short order.
Now, in the evening, the winds are still tricksterish, but in addition to smoke in the west, wave after wave of small-cell storms are making their way around the peaks, traveling from northwest to northeast. In theory, we should have gotten a little from the wild clouds that seemed to whip themselves up out of nothing and nowhere, but nothing has fallen here. The ridgeline is another matter; until dark fell a few moments ago, you could see the tendrils of rain reaching down the slopes.
It did, however, produce a spectacular twilight: sunset fire, in crimson and amber, its warm glow infusing the smoke at the western horizon and the clouds opposite simultaneously even as it lit up the scarlet and gold and fading green of the foliage; the deeper azure of impending night lit by the silvery glow of the crescent moon; and darkness already present in the shadows that are everywhere now. Autumn here runs the gamut: a spectrum of colors and textures, rich and somehow enveloping of an earth well-loved by fall’s light.
Today’s featured work, one created by Wings with a distinctly different season in mind, nonetheless seems to embody this love, and this light, that are the hallmarks of autumn in this small corner of the world. It’s a masterwork by any measure, one that brings together a whole world’s worth of beauty and adornment, all woven together in a jeweled cascade worthy of current storms and fall’s lights of day and night. 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 a love ancient and eternal. 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 above, below, and at the link.
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
This is a personal favorite, for its beauty and for its complexity. What it represents, at its most essential level, is simple in the extreme: a love ancient and eternal, the cosmic love of earth and sky for us, and ours for them, and for their children, our relatives.
Or so it should be.
There’s precious little to indicate that much of humanity feels anything at all for these cosmic forces upon which their lives, like our own, depend so utterly. And humanity collectively is reaping the whirlwind of their distinctly unloving approach to life and being.
But we are not bound by their terrible worldviews or ways of being. And works such as this one are wrought specifically to remind us of that essential and now desperately needed truth: that we are one, related, interdependent, and our survival depends upon that of everyone and everything else.
And so this piece is built around a rare and ancient material from Turkey that suits October perfectly, dark and shadowy fossilized wood mineralized with chrysocolla and azurite in the clear turquoise blues of the autumn sky; amber, carnelian, and shimmering aquamarine imported from India, tiny jeweled suns and stars to hold earth and wood in their embrace; ebony, hard-carved and polished by Indigenous artists in Malawi, brought to these shores in an exchange that aids them, and us; amber slices from Eurasia, more slices of the fall sun that sets the leaves alight; old, old, OLD natural turquoise from Wings’s own private collection, drawn from the earth of this very land mass decades ago.
And it serves as a reminder that at every point around that globe that produced such objects of beauty, we all live and thrive under the same sun, the same moon, the same stars. They may appear at somewhat different angles at any given moment or season, but time works it magic irrespective of the perceptions of mere mortals. For us, this is an earth well-loved by fall’s light, but its bigger lesson is that we are all well-loved by it, no matter the climate, season, location, or weather.
Now, we need a collective commitment to love them all back: earth and sky and waters and light, a love ancient and eternal, for the good of us all.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
