Today dawned sunny and largely clear, but with a chill edge to the air. Now, as morning ticks its way toward midday, the wind has risen, driving in a web of dove-gray clouds overhead to trace pale bands across the sky. The capricious weather reminds us once again that, where the elemental power are concerned, we can take nothing for granted.
It’s a truth never more evident here than in spring. The earth is green now, but drying fast in the arid embrace of a trickster wind beneath a freeform sky, both always in pursuit of agendas of cosmic scope and an equal mystery.
Today’s featured work embodies the latter in its plural form, one that simultaneously captures reality and hints at possibility — other worlds, perhaps greater, perhaps not, but all rendered mysterious by their very imperceptibility. 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 is one of my favorite rings, not merely of Wings’s current inventory but of his entire body of work in that category. It’s not just the ethereal freeform stone, a perfect robin’s-egg blue finely webbed with darker shades and bits of emerald green, although that adds to its allure. But what makes the ring, to my mind, is its similarly freeform band: geometric, asymmetrical, yet just as perfectly graceful, wrought in spare, flowing, elegant lines and shimmering hammered silver.
In that regard, it’s a perfect design for this season, one that defies the strictures of hard angles and straight lines to produce its own rebellious beauty.
We speak of this as the trickster season: unpredictable, volatile, unwilling to be bridled or hobbled, chained or restrained in any way. But the fact of the matter is that this season, like all of the elemental powers, has its own immanent logic, one that demands an infinite universe of possibility.
Now, we are granted access to a small part of that potential, the chance to ride out the day upon a trickster wind beneath a freeform sky.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
