We awakened this morning to the freest of freeform skies, a new day birthed from bands of clouds and rays of light. On a low post toward the southeast corner, a red-tailed hawk sat with ruffled feathers limned in the sun’s own silver and gold, preening in the cold clear light of the dawn.
Snow is coming.
This is good. We know it, the animals know it, the earth knows it. And the wild creatures are already making ready: Seemingly the entire clan of crows is either beneath the feeder or foraging in the fields. The starlings and collared doves, both invasive species, are waiting their turn at the suet. Meanwhile, the tiny juncos and still tinier chickadees flit back and forth, back and forth, too vulnerable not to use every spare second stockpiling seed, too quick for the larger birds to obstruct their progress.
At the moment, the skies are now a near-solid turquoise, only small traces of white trailing behind the peaks. To the west, though, the horizon is less clear, the long wispy bands the serve as the storm’s scouts already exploring the lower atmosphere. By tonight, there will be much more gray visible, a Skystone sky matrixed by the leading edge of the coming storm.
It makes today’s featured work especially apt, one that holds simultaneously the clear blue and the encroaching web, backlit by rays of silvery light. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
Freeform Skies Ring
Our world is just orbicular enough to stay balanced on its axis, and in an infinite universe, we live beneath freeform skies. Wings brings them down to earth with this new ring, a solitaire both bold and bright. The wide band is cut freehand in his signature scalloped design, then hammered by hand with scored of delicate strikes by a jeweler’s hammer. The stone is spectacular, an old blue turquoise cabochon from his personal collection: free-form, lightly domed, an electric shade of sky blue spiderwebbed with indigo and emerald green matrix and bits of golden-ivory host rock. The stone most likely hails from Nevada’s Fox Mine (the old Cortez Mine) or the Royston District, and is set securely into a scalloped bezel. The band is 7/16″ wide at its widest point and 1/4″ wide at its narrowest point; the cabochon is 7/8″ long by 5/8″ across at its widest point (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; old natural blue turquoise (likely Fox or Royston)
$625 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This one was a personal favorite from the moment Wings created it. It really does remind me of our skies here, electric blues and trailing bands of ethereal clouds, lit from behind and within by a radiant cascade of silver. The stone itself is the very shade of the high desert sky awash with all the cold crystal clarity of winter. The matrix is as finely webbed as the high thin clouds that encircle the horizon this time of year, occasionally coalescing to build up into something more.
The band? The band is something else.
Stone and setting are beautiful, but to my mind, it is the band that makes this piece: a flowing asymmetry that, looks at as a whole, nonetheless matches up perfectly — all cut from a substantial gauge of sterling silver entirely freehand. More, its been hammered by hand, scores, perhaps hundreds of individual strikes of the jeweler’s hammer, to give it texture and depth, like the rays of the sun behind a bank of shirred white clouds . . . the sort that hovered gently above a solitary sun dog here late yesterday, the same hawk looking from a willow’s upper branch on as the light shimmered and danced before her.
We have no power to halt the weather — and, indeed, would not want it, even should we suddenly become able — but what we can do is appreciate the blessings that it brings. At this season, that means the gift off the snow, perhaps the greatest gift our small world here receives all year . . . but it also means the essential, elemental beauty found in bands of clouds and rays of 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.
