In our cultures, “medicine” is so much more than plants and herbs and hands-on healing. We find medicine, and thus healing, in the stories and symbols of our peoples, in the spirits that live in earth and sky are all around us, in the dreams and visions that allow us to pass, however briefly and tentatively, across the thresholds of other worlds.
It’s why Wings’s work so often features the landscape of vision and topography of dreams: These are the places and spaces in which the spirits speak, the path through which the lend guidance and wisdom, through which the send medicine and healing and the way to live in harmony.
His latest work is one of the finest examples of such imagery that he’s created in a while. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Star Scout Necklace
Sometimes we all need a spirit scout to help find us find our way in healing and harmony. An Indian paint horse races across the vaulted night sky, scouting a path among the stars. Horse and stars alike are sterling silver overlays within a constellation of cabochons the color of the night sky, one placed at the each of the cardinal directions. On the reverse, a healing hand rests at the center, flanked by directional arrows aimed at the ordinal points. The shimmery textured effect of the pony’s paint coat, like the edge of the galaxy through which he runs, is created through thousands of individually-hammered strikes of a tiny round stamp. Two tassels of genuine horsehair trail downward from sterling silver squash blossoms. The entire pendant hangs suspended from a strand of antique sterling silver “doughnut” beads polished to a mirror sheen’ at each end of the strand are eight square lapis lazuli beads, finished off with eight smaller round sterling silver beads in a Florentine finish. Beads hang just over 19″; pendant is 3.5″ wide and 4″ high from bail to end of tassels; tassels hang 1-5/8″ from rings to tips. Other views shown below.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; horsehair
$2,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
If you’ve ever seen the deepening blue of a dusken desert sky, you’ll recognize the color in the indigo of the lapis lazuli cabochons, shades of cobalt and indigo and even midnight, shot through with tiny galaxy trails of star-like silver shimmer. The texture of the shield itself, as the description notes, is all created entirely by hand, through thousands of repeated strikes of a tiny jeweler’s hammer upon a microscopic circular stamp. The labor is enormous, but the effect is magic, sending the paint horse galloping through a constellation of stardust. The bail bears a four-pointed guiding star at the center; above and below, water birds guide the horse around the vortex of a spiral sky. On the reverse, a hand, traditional symbol of medicine and healing, rests against the skin, pulling power from the same spirits embodied on the front:
Suspended from the base of the shield-like pendant are two tassels of actual horsehair, itself in silvery shades, threaded through squash blossoms to hold them securely.
The beads that hold the pendant are a work of art in metal and stone: antique doughnut-style rondels in brilliant sterling silver, chunky squares of dark-blue lapis lazuli with matrices in shades of pewter and bronze, and gently textured round silver beads with a delicate;y aged Florentine finish.
It’s a piece designed to call upon the spirit of one of our most powerful four-legged relations, and to call down the guidance and wisdom of the spirits who inhabit in the night sky.
It’s a piece of dreams and visions, a bearer of healing and harmony, a manifestation of medicine in its most powerful forms.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
