It has been a day.
A hot one, and a hectic one, too, one filled with tasks that were time-sensitive but kept us both from our regular work. There will be more such tasks and obligations this week, and next week, too, and while the lack of anything like rain today was perhaps more convenient overall, the return of the heat was not.
And yet, despite the rising mercury, today felt like fall: those clear, bright days at the middle of September, when puffy white clouds drift across a bright blue sky, and the spirits of summer are slowly ceding space to leaves going gold and dry air growing cold at night.
These are not the only signs of incipient autumn, either. The first purple asters opened three days ago, small petals in shades of twilight that normally first appear at September’s end, or more likely, in the early days of October. The chamisa has been in early flower for weeks now, and I fully expect to see the hummingbird moths arrive any day now. Even the orb weavers, October’s children, have already set up their mandala-like webs beneath the eaves.
What we have not seen yet are the monarchs, although August is their season. In truth, they often arrive around the last week of July, staying until early to mid-September, when their circadian rhythms send them back to along migratory paths for the winter. But we have had years recently when we have had none, and while we did have one or two astonishingly early in the season, they have long since departed.
But it’s not just the monarchs; we’ve had perhaps one or two mourning cloaks and only one swallowtail this year [although the latter was a giant of its kind]; and beyond one or two painted ladies, we had only a smattering of whites and bright yellow sulphs, both of these smaller species usually abundant. Butterflies are messenger spirits, and we cannot help but wonder what wisdom we are missing when they are absent. They are also pollinators, children of the winds and the light and the land itself, spreading life and breath and bringing sky to earth.
And today’s featured work, a masterwork by any measure, is a tribute to these fragile but powerful beings to the gift of their messages and the medicine of their work. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery:
Migratory Paths Cuff Bracelet
Butterflies, small messengers who travel migratory paths, teach us that there are many ways open to us on our journey, and that change can be a gift. With this new and powerful masterwork of multiple silversmithing techniques, Wings has summoned the spirit of Butterfly and the messages she carries upon her wings to show us the dazzling array of paths available and the endless possibilities they hold. The cuff is wrought of heavy, solid sixteen-gauge sterling silver, with a classic wide, hand-cut band; it’s edged with slender borders scored freehand and chased with a repeating diamond motif. In between the borders, more graceful arcs are hand-scored using Wings’s own hand-made stamps; each enclosed space is then stamped freehand in a distinctive repeating pattern of rows and roads, collectively representing hundreds of strikes of the heavy jeweler’s hammer, every path different from every other. At the very center of the band’s outer surface sits Butterfly as you’ve never seen her before, cut and stamped entirely freehand, overlaid securely onto the surface with scalloped wings that rise to flutter freely in the space above the band. Her antennae are individually articulated; her head, an old oval cabochon of sky-blue Kingman turquoise; her body formed from four hand-made sunbursts formed of sterling silver ingot. The band is 6″ long by 2.25″ wide; the butterfly overlay is 2″ high from highest to lowest points and 2.25″ across at the widest points; her wings rise 3/8″ above the surface of the band at the highest point; turquoise cabochon is 3/8″ long by 1/4″ across; ingot sunbursts are 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; Kingman turquoise
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is, truly, an extraordinary work. It’s big and bold, the band cut classically wide, but it’s the detail work that makes it. Wings’s micro-stamping techniques create a representation of the migratory paths these spirits travel, and ones they beckon us to follow, too: paths of life and love, of light and wisdom, of every kind of medicine the spirits offer us for our well-being and survival.
The long, sweeping arcs that separate each section are wrought with Wings’s own hand-made stamp, a curving line that is often used to symbolize flowing-water. It’s a meaning that fits here, in this place where water is so much more than just life as a slogan: Here, water is breath, and love, and wisdom, and survival. The stampwork that fills them, to say nothing of the Art. Deco geometry that edges each border, scored freehand, represents hundreds of strikes of a five-pound solid steel jeweler’s hammer.
Creating a work like this is itself work.
And then there’s the butterfly spirit atop it. This part of the cuff was created wholly independently, saw-cut and scalloped and stamped freehand of a single piece, antenna fully articulated. The body, too, is properly segmented, formed equally independently of four separate sterling silver ingot sunbursts, each wrought entirely by hand, melted, formed, stamped, and overlaid. The head is a small oval cabochon of very old turquoise from Wings’s private collection, highly domed Kingman the exact shade of this alpine-desert sky. It’s set into a saw-toothed bezel that is similarly soldered into place atop the butterfly’s body.
And then the entire small spirit is formed perfectly, wings lifted just enough for it to appear to be hovering, ready to alight or take flight, soldered securely to the band’s top center while the wings float freely.
These are the works that inspire joy, in their creation and in their wearing . . . but they are also bearers of wisdom, of medicine, of power. This one honors the tiny messengers of its kind, and their life-sustaining work of bringing sky to earth.
In that, they are like the Skystone that adorns this one: not pollen but rain, hardened into a jewel of breath and life all the same.
~ 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.
