In what should be the heart of our rainy season, we are instead in for a heat wave: For the next week and more, we are under an official advisory warning people to stay indoors and hydrated, as record-breaking temperatures are expected to arrive. Here, we very rarely get out of the nineties — I think we’ve officially hit the century mark no more than two or three times in all the years I’ve lived here — but June is normally our hottest month. By July’s second week, where we find ourselves now, the mercury usually doesn’t even reach ninety before the daily monsoonal rains begin to fall.
But now, there is no rain, and no real chance of any for more than a week, if the forecast is to be believed.
These are hard days. Drought of the earth leads to drought of the spirit.
But there is hope, always; possibility, always. Sometimes it requires us to adjust our expectations; sometimes it requires us to adapt and evolve. Always, it requires us to do the work.
Times like this? Require all of the above.
But there is help — for us, and for our world. The same forces and spirits that gave us the gift of our existence have not abandoned us, nor will they. Sun and Moon dream the world into being, and even now, they deliver to us the gifts of coiling flame, cooling light, and medicine for a new world.
Today’s featured work embodies the spirits, the gifts, and the work required of us, too. It’s Wings’s newest, completed only this morning, and it is a masterpiece of freehand overlay and stampwork. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Sun and Moon Dream the World Into Being Cuff Bracelet
Sun and moon dream the world into being, hold it on its axis in an orbit of warm fire and cooling light. Wings dreams their spirits into being, too, with this cuff bracelet, a marvel of freehand stampwork that pays tribute to the motifs and medicine of the celestial spirits and their powers. The band’s pattern is formed largely of a single triangular stamp, a peak of rays above three smaller half orbs. Each open-ended triangle traces either edge of the band; two more rows meet in the middle to form radiant Eyes of Spirit, lit from within by a central sun and a moon on wax and wane, each connected by a plain, smooth “Eye” formed of the negative space between them. At either end is a single lifeline, flowing and bidirectional, representing the infinity of possibility for this visionary world of celestial dreams. The stampwork on the band’s surface is so deep, so consitent and uniform, that its spirit echoes softly on the underside. At either end of the inner band, overlays of a pair of hand-formed coils of shimmering copper replicate Earth’s orbit and the way of the hoop simultaneously. At the center of the outer band, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed with twisted silver, sits a long, tapered oval cabochon of spiny oyster shell and copper composite, shades of sunfire and moonglow heat-treated to meld in a glorious burst of orange flame and snowy white. The band is 6″ long by 1-1/16″ across; the bezel is 1-9/16″ long by 9/16″ across at the widest point; the cabochon is 1-3/8″ long by 3/8″ across at the widest point (directions approximate). Sides, ends and inner band, and front views shown above and below.
Sterling silver; copper; spiny oyster shell and copper composite
$1,250 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The overlays are extraordinary: two twinned coils of polished copper, a larger world spinning off a smaller satellite, still held firmly by gravity in the proper orbit. They embody not only the path of our world, but of ourselves, the spiraling sacred hoop that brings larger forces and ways into focus, up close and deeply personal.
And if the spirals are symbols of infinite possibility, so, too, is the traditional Indigenous lifeline that Wings placed at each end of the band. It bends and flows, much like our own path, like our very breath, but it holds infinite promise in both directions.
then there is the surface stampwork. It’s all formed of a single stamp, repeated, deeply and consistently — scores of repetitions, each aligned with or arrayed against the next, conjoined along a center row to form radiant Eyes of Spirit and producing, via negative space, smooth, clear Eyes of Spirit connecting them.
It’s a powerful motif, these twinned symbols of guidance and illumination, of visions and dreams, of the wisdom of the spirits: the gift of existence, and the tools with which to survive it, to thrive in it.
Such a band deserves a powerful focal stone, and this one does not disappoint. It’s not a spectacularly costly cabochon; it’s a composite of flame orange and snow white spiny oyster shell, heat-treated and melded with inclusions of genuine copper. It makes for a stunning contrast: hot and cold, fire and snow, yes, but also Sun and Moon, the two ancestral spirits who guide and govern our place in the cosmos. Composite cabochons are fragile; the fracture lines between stone or shell and included metals, united from separate parts, are potential points of breakage. And so it rests in the embrace of a scalloped bezel, secure, yet exposing as much of its beauty as possible, and edged with the added solidity of twisted silver.
Together, its constituent elements create a formidable piece of silverwork, one much more than the sum of its parts . . . a bit like our world, dreamed into being and held aloft and in motion by the pull of celestial spirits. It does no good to focus too long on what is changed or missing; the key is to see it as a new whole, and to evolve and adapt accordingly. Sun and Moon have dreamed us into being, and still they give us coiling flame, cooling light, and medicine for a new world. It’s up to us to build it.
~ 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.
