Five degrees at dawn, with a wind chill of five below zero. The magpies have returned, beautiful black and white birds: teardrop-shaped, like maidens wrapped in gracefully pleated shawls. Their bi-color iridescent beauty reminds me of today’s featured work, a work that complements the one we featured here on Wednesday: a pair of small Corn Maidens to accompany their larger sister.
Wednesday’s feature was a big bold masterwork, a showpiece in the form of an exceptionally detailed, beautifully bejeweled necklace rendered as Corn Maiden, an Indian corn spirit. Today, we highlight the earrings designed to coordinate with her — not to match, precisely, but to complement her and to keep company with her, as siblings are wont to do. They are all, after all, incarnations of the First Sister, first among the three who have sustained our peoples since the time before time.
It’s their name: The First Sisters. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
The First Sisters Earrings
Corn is the first of the Three Sisters, those sustaining spirits that feed The People. Among the Pueblo peoples of this land, the first sister is personified by the Corn Maidens, female spirit beings whose gift is abundance. Wings has summoned them from sterling silver in this tribute to old-style Native earrings, large, bold pieces that sit at the top of the lobe and hang halfway down the neck. Each is hand-cut in an elongated teardrop. Their faces, hair, dress, and tablita headresses are created from a variety of hand-stamped traditional symbols: sun signs, crescent moons, Eyes of Spirit, running waters. At the center of each lies a single round onyx cabochon, a stone of grounding in the deep rich color of the earth from which the corn itself emerges. Earrings hang 2-7/8″ long by 7/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate); on the back, extended-length sterling silver wires hold them securely in place.
Sterling silver; onyx
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
For a work that embodies spirits wholly of the earth, birthed from the soil with the aid of sun and rain, it feels much lighter: a pair of spirits likewise of the air, two black and silvery birds, taking flight. It’s magical imagery f a sort that bespeaks metamorphosis, twinned representations of a cool and elegant phoenix of sorts, emerging from the “fire” that is ice.
On such a cold winter’s morning, earth and sky alike crystalline with snow, seemingly aflame beneath the shafts of dawn sunlight knifing through the clouds, they transform the summery spirits of the corn into something sustainable even in the cold — like the magpies, dancing between earth and sky on the winter light.
~ Aji
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