It is bitterly cold here today: high winds driving intermittent snow nearly horizontal, temperatures dropping consistently from a pre-dawn high. In the still-dark hours before a sunrise bereft of any visible sun, we were visited by thunder, lightning, wind, rain, sleet, snow, and ice. We have since had sun here and there, but winter is well and truly here now.
The way forward will be cold and harsh in the months to come. We will need fire: to warm our bodies, sustain our spirits, guide our way, light our path.
Perhaps such considerations were at the back of Wings’s mind in recent days; he certainly knows, better than anyone, the patterns of weather and season in this place. Perhaps it was premonitory, too: an instinctive foreknowledge of the difficult days to come, days that are now suddenly here. Or perhaps it was all merely coincidental, that he should decide to create the beginnings of a new small series of earrings, earrings that, in the case of the two pairs featured here today, invoke the spirits of fire and flame.
The first pair invoke the image of the wheel, fire medicine driven inward on the four winds to the center. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
FireWheel Earrings
Small round sterling silver conchas capture the spirits of flame and motion and light. Each begins with a perfect round medallion of lightweight sterling silver, hand-domed, repoussé-fashion, and suspended from sterling silver wires. On the front, Wings has created a fire wheel on the surface with detailed freehand stampwork: a wheel of rising suns rings the edge, embracing a center pattern of rising flames riding the four winds inward toward a center vortex. On the reverse, Wings’s hallmark is stamped in a single overlay heart cut freehand and soldered into the center of each earring. Earrings glow with a soft Florentine finish, and hang 7/8″ long (excluding wires) by 7/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
They are simultaneously simple and complex, layers of meaning without extraneous adornment — and at the price Wings has set for them, a relative steal.
The second pair is similar in style, with the same price point. These, however, more directly invoke the motifs of directionality. Depending upon how one focuses the eye when looking at them, they may appear to display a crossroads with spokes placed at the cardinal directions . . . or to emphasize navigation on the diagonal, zeroing in from the ordinal points toward the center. From their description in the same gallery:
The Fire Road Earrings
The Fire Road is a crossroads, one that leads the flames from the Sacred Directions inward to the center of the vortex. Wings captures its path in this pair of concha earrings, small round medallions with a shimmering Florentine finish, each domed lightly by hand, repoussé-fashion. Arcing sunrise symbols edge each drop, forming an embrasure for the flowering flame patterns set at the cardinal directions, and the arrows aimed inward at the ordinal points: a navigational guide to the sacred hoop at the center. On the reverse, Wings’s hallmark rests within a small sterling silver heart cut freehand and overlaid at the heart of each earring. Earrings hang 7/8″ long (excluding wires) by 7/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Reverse shown below.
Sterling silver
$125 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD
These, too, share wheel-like properties, just as the first pair, viewed from a certain perspective, also invokes the image of a crossroads. With this pair the image is less a roaring bonfire than simple tongues of flame, but they mark the way nonetheless.
Each pair is a beautiful invocation of powerful traditional motifs, indigenous symbols that speak of guidance and direction, of the path around the sacred hoop and the way of a life well-lived.
And on this day, as the winds blow ever colder, they speak to me of warmth, of medicinal fire wheels and red fire roads, and of the fire that sustains body and spirit.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
