The weather is changing.
A high of fifty-five yesterday means little twenty-four hours later; the air is cold and the skies are close and mostly gray. It’s actually a beautiful day, held gently by bands of cloud and the storm’s first light, and a haunted and haunting air upon the wind.
There is unlikely to be snow tonight, but tomorrow is another matter entirely. In the meantime, we have been the granted of skies filled with an ethereal beauty, few shadows cast but plenty of lines drawn between cloud and light.
In other words, it’s a perfect day for today’s featured work, one of Wings’s big, bold pieces that nonetheless seems, like the storm itself, to be lit from within. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Light In the Storm Cuff Bracelet
It is in the eye of the storm that we are afforded a glimpse of its passing, when the clouds part momentarily to let the light descend. Wings has captured the glow of those rays in this anticlastic cuff, as big and bold as the storm itself, as bright as the light that transcends it. The band is wrought of sixteen-gauge sterling silver, heavier than usual for the shaping required of an anticlastic band, and sloped gently upward on either side. Its surface is free of adornment save a row of chased traditional symbols that run its entire length: stylized thunderheads paired together at their bases to form a sig of the Four Sacred Directions, each mated pair embracing an Eye of Spirit, that which watches over us even in the fiercest storm. At its center, elevated upon a small sterling silver cylinder, rests another representation of Spirit’s Eye: the light itself, caught and held fast in a massive cabochon of dove-gray labradorite. The stone possesses breathtaking depth and clarity, shot through with angled inclusions like sheets of rain and refracting the light into a gold-tinged rainbow of color. Hand-stamped stars of various shapes and sizes spread stardust along the cuff’s inner band. Band is 1-11/16″ across; cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 11/16″ high (dimensions approximate). Other views shown below. First in Wings’s new series, The Light Collection.
Sterling silver; labradorite
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This cuff is a work of pure elemental power, one that manages to be both bold and subtle at the same time. There’s no mistaking the force of tradition that animates its outsized design, nor the grace of the gently sloping sides that beckon the light to the center for a chance at shimmering refraction.
The band itself is kept simple spare, and mostly unadorned, a single chased line of traditional symbols, thunderhead motifs that, when conjoined, create Eyes of Spirit within their spokes, the only stampwork on the piece. It’s a reminder that the storm can speak for itself, and that our role is to observe and to listen.
The focal stone, too, is kept simple and powerful, an equally outsized oval cabochon of luminous Labradorite, one that holds bands and lines and shadows within itself, allowing the light to filter through and render them visible to the naked eye.
Natural Labradorite manifests in gray hues underlit by various other shades: blues and greens and golds; hints of amber and copper and occasionally silver; in its rare spectrolite variant, in pinks and purples, too. This cabochon embodies the more classic colors, but there’s nothing ordinary about them or it: a stormy gray bisected on the diagonal, mostly moss green above and shimmering gold below, glowing as though lit by an inner sun that throws the rutile inclusions into sharp relief.
It’s as though our current sky has been captured and held in jeweled form: bands of cloud and the storm’s first light, an early harbinger of the gifts of the precipitation to come.
And for them all, we are grateful.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
