When the water comes, even winter worlds awaken.
It came this morning only a few minutes ahead of its newly-appointed time (appointed by the weather experts, that is): a mix of rain and sleet just after dawn, spun out of the low-lying fog and the snow falling around the peaks to fall upon an earth just rousing itself for the day. Those freezing drops have long since ceased, that particular storm cell pushed southwestward by a rogue northeast wind. We have had breaks in the clouds sufficient to reveal turquoise skies, and now the lapis and violet of the storm have coalesced again on all sides.
A quick glance at the weather map suggests that more rain is not far off, with snow close behind, and the suggestion that we might see up to eight inches on the ground before we are done.
Already, though, the air feels cleaner, clearer, the earth somehow both more focused and alive. Even the waters of winter renew the world.
Speaking of things new and renewed, today’s featured work is the embodiment of both, and of the water, of its gifts and medicine. It’s also Wings’s newest bracelet, a big, bold cuff hand-wrought in the patterns of precipitation, built around the blues of water and sky. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
When the Water Comes Cuff Bracelet
Pond or lake, rain or river, the ebb and flow of the tides: When the water comes, it comes as the First Medicine. Wings honors the medicine as he summons the rains and the pooled waters of the bluest of lakes with this cuff, hand-wrought in eighteen-gauge sterling silver. The band is hand-scored on either side and hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of radiant crescents connected by tiny sacred hoops; between the scored borders is a flowing water motif, connected at the ends by tiny petals in flower. The space between stampwork and edge is hand-texturized on either side, via hundreds of tiny dots struck individually by hand. At the center, elevated slightly from the bands surface, sits a breathtaking cabochon of lapis lazuli, set into a scalloped bezel and trimmed in twisted silver to offset its extraordinary cobalt blue infused with shimmering pyrite. The focal stone is flanked on either side by a pair of Skystones, each a small square of Sleeping Beauty turquoise, surface freeform in texture, color the blue of the desert sky adrift with more bits of pyrite amid an inky black matrix. The band is 6″ long by 1-3/16″ across; the bezel for the focal cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 1-1/4″ across at the widest point; the focal lapis cabochon is 1-1/4″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; Square Sleeping Beauty cabochons are each 7/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; lapis lazuli; Sleeping Beauty turquoise
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This day is as beautiful as its weather, and as welcome, too. In a world decimated by drought, we greet water in all its forms with a gratitude as profound as it is heart-felt. Fog and frost, rain and sleet, ice and snow — we receive them all with something approaching joy, and no small sense of relief that the first medicine has at last once again found its way to an earth so badly in need of healing. Indeed, the snow is perhaps most welcome of all, given that its accumulated volume feeds a thirsty land in spring and summer, too.
It is a day for sitting by the fire, but also one for going out and letting the rain fall upon one’s face, for opening one’s arms to the embrace of snow and storm. Even the waters of winter renew the world, and today, we are watching it revive before our eyes, with gratitude in our hearts.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
