Today’s mix of clouds and sun has been weighted on the cloudy side, but the forecast insists that there will be no rain before six o’clock this evening.
Even so, it has changed its tune about the type of rain: Where this morning it described a possibility of “showers” after that point, now the prediction refers explcitily to “thunderstorms.” There are times when that’s a distinction without much of a difference, but this summer, the thunderstorms have been wild indeed.
Around the county, several lower-lying areas have been subject to washouts over the last week; up in the mountains, the going is hard, too. We are fortunate, indeed, blessed, that the earth on our own small bit of this land remains seemingly endlessly capable of absorbing what the skies deliver. And while the gifts of the rains were delayed too long for us to plant, at least the noncultivated plants — the wildflowers, the perennial herbs, the medicines, even a few that function as food — are thriving now.
A healing earth flowers with medicine, and that is as true at the microcosmic level as it is planet-wide.
We have spent this week in this space exploring the beauty and blessings of summer wildflowers as captured through the lens, and the silver and stones, of Wings’s work. This week’s Friday Feature continues that theme, albeit in a slightly more metaphorical form, focusing on a specific entry in the last collection in Wings’s signature seasonal series of gemstone bead works. This one represents The Summer Elementals: Earth, and it encompasses the shapes and shades and textures of the vast array of wildflowers and foods and medicine plants that make our lands at this season so brilliantly hued, so rich and lush with life. As always, it’s a trio of works — necklace, pair of earrings, and coil bracelet — and as always, we begin here with the necklace, found in The Beaded Hoop Collection of the Necklaces Gallery here on the site. From its description:
Where the Blue Corn Grows Necklace
In this place, the summer earth is where the blue corn grows, stalks tall and ears a mix of cornflower and ivory, gold and violet. With this necklace, Wings honors the rich red-brown soil that births it, the green stalks and leaves that hold it gently, and the brilliant kernels that will become food, offerings, medicine. At either end, the strand is anchored by tiny round diamond-cut sterling silver beads that flash like the mica that makes the local clay shimmer, then alternates between round Chinese writing stone orbs in two shades of rich earthy brown and extraordinary chrysoprase barrel beads in glowing jade green marbled with golden-brown matrix. The chrysoprase dances with freeform yellow opal, luminous white-lip mother-of-pearl shell rounds, and freeform nuggets of stormy blue Dumortierite in a gradient that resembles the rows of kernels in an ear of blue corn. The best of the blue Indian corn sits at the center like an offering, an extraordinary violet-blue barrel of natural iolite flanked on either side by paired orbs of glossy Dumortierite in shades of indigo and cornflower. Necklace hangs 22″ long, excluding findings (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Necklace coordinates with From the Richest Clay earrings and A Wild Earth Medicine coil bracelet. From the Earth series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings;
Beads: Iolite; Dumortierite; white-lip mother-of-pearl shell; yellow opal;
chrysoprase; Chinese writing stone; diamond-cut sterling silver
$400 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Lest you think corn is not medicine, let me disabuse you of that notion right now. It is food, yes, of course; it is a subject of art and even adornment; it is one of the objects of ceremony. And while even the most brilliantly-hued stalks and ears of Indian corn do not technically possess petals and leaves, I think the mix of husks and naturally-braided cornsilk is close enough to qualify as the latter, and the jeweled kernels perfectly suited to the former.
And in this rich, nuggety strand of beads, their shapes and spirits show themselves clearly: hard round kernels of cobalt and violet and deepest midnight, of shiny hues just a shade off white, of the sunny golden versions that contrast so beautifully with the blues (and whose irregular shapes are embodied beautifully by the opal nuggets). The writing stone rounds are a match to the shade of the healthy summer earth, the bright brown of rich clay veined with darker deposits. And the chrysoprase barrels that form husk and stalk are absolutely extraordinary exeplars of their kind: bright, lush, smooth, like velvet that shimmers in the light..
And it is the shades of stalk and soil that anchor the second of today’s featured works, the coordinating pair of earrings. These were never intended as a perfect match (that would be impossible anyway, given the sheer diversity of beads in the necklace and the coil) but are explicitly complementary; they’re found in The Standing Stones Collection in the Earrings Gallery. From their description:
From the Richest Clay Earrings
Here, the gifts of summer grow from the richest clay. With these earrings, Wings pays tribute to an earth renewed by recent rains, all marbled red-gold and darkest brown now with emergent green. Beads are strung on filament-thin sterling silver round wire with diminutive diamond-cut sterling silver rounds anchoring either end and setting the glowing green chrysoprase barrel apart from the rest. The remaining rounds form a gradient of color and size, matched Red Creek jasper rounds in all the colors of adobe clay embracing a single glossy orb of brown-black Picasso jasper, evoking the deepest soil here, coffee-colored and banded with basalt and bits of slate. At the bottom, a smaller sphere of Chinese writing stone in earthy umber scribed with brick holds the strand above the tiny shimmering accent bead. Earrings hang 2.5″ long, excluding wires (dimensions approximate). Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Earrings coordinate with Where the Blue Corn Grows necklace and A Wild Earth Medicine coil bracelet. From the Earth series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Sterling silver; diamond-cut sterling silver; chrysoprase;
Red Creek jasper; Picasso jasper; Chinese writing stone
$175 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Again, the ethereal summer green of the chrysoprase barrels serves as the perfect anchor to each dnagling drop, its shape and color further set off from the remaining rounds by tny diamond-cut sterling silver accent beads. The gradient of shape, size, and color beneath do indeed capture those of the richest clay in the land, something with which our own land was blessed before being caught in the death grip of this twelve-hundred-year drought.
This pair, to me, symbolizes are our very real hopes that it may be again — that the land may be healed, and once again nurture the kinds of medicine foremerly so common here.
Speaking of which, as I noted above, some of the wild medicines have returned. That alone is cause for joy and celebration now, but it does nothing to temper our hopes that we can bring back most, perhaps all, of what has been lost in this recent terrible years.
And those, lost, returned, and surviving alike, are what animates the third and final work of today’s featured trio. This is the coil bracelet, a spiral of colorful wildflower beauty and power, found in The Coiled Power Collections of the Bracelets Gallery. From its description:
A Wild Earth Medicine Coil Bracelet
The long light days of summer here are spent in the presence of a wild earth medicine, upon rolling meadows of wildflowers and amid the red willows rustling in the wind. With this coil bracelet, Wings calls to the circle all the shades of stalk and petal, of the rippling greens and the red of the lush stands that lend people and place their name. Each end is anchored with a short segment of diamond-cut sterling silver rounds that catch the light like the season’s raindrops. Freeform nuggets of cherry amber of Ethiopian silver faceted barrels trade space leading to a length of glossy maroon rounds of red willow wood. Impression jasper in the pinks and blues of coneflowers and columbine, bright jade chrysoprase barrels, and yellow opal doughnut rondels as bright as the wild sunflowers flow inward toward segments of golden Pietersite like small marbled suns, earthy Red Creek jasper in all the shades of adobe clay, and chatoyant kyanite rounds in the color of prairie cornflowers. At the center, a pair of extraordinary giant spheres of blue spiderweb turquoise, flanked by ultra-high-grade raindrop rondels of aquamarine, embrace a pair of phenomenal puffed rondels of Columbia jade bisected by more yellow opal, all the colors of the Three Sisters and their wildflower cousins in a single radiant spiral. Bracelet consists of four full coils of beads strung on memory wire, which expands and contracts to fit nearly any wrist. Designed jointly by Wings and Aji. Another view shown at the link. Coil bracelet coordinates with Where the Blue Corn Grows necklace and From the Richest Clay earrings. From the Earth series in Wings’s new collection, The Summer Elementals (all pieces shown above and at the link).
Memory wire; Columbia jade; aquamarine; blue spiderweb turquoise; kyanite; Red Creek jasper; yellow opal; chrysoprase;
Ethiopian silver; Pietersite; impression jasper; red willow wood; cherry amber; diamond-cut sterling silver
$350 + shipping, handling, and insurance
What is not visible from the angle of this image is the mix of lush greens cascading along its center: Columbia jade, aquamarine, more of that glowing chrysoprase. That was by design; I wanted to show the side of it manifest in all the shades of the summer wildflowers’ brightest petals, and the other view is immediately visible in the image at the top, as well as at the link to the bracelet’s individual gallery entry. But this one captures, to my mind, all the best of summer color here, all the rich intense shades of earth and sky, but also the icy shimmer of raindrops, the mysterious veil of the clouds, the glow of the late-season blossoms that follow the sun.
After the rains of a few days ago, the wild sunflowers have gathered the courage to open and dance in the light. The cowpen daisies, of course, hardy souls that they are, still blanket every available field. We have three pink cosmos in bloom, a few pink hydrangea, and the purples of columbine and aster and the last of the catmint. We also have the first yellowed aspen leaves, and the first red on the largest maple.
Summer may not yet be gone, but fall is here, and seems repared to stay.
Still, we are blessed with a habitat in which plants flower and thrive well outside the windows that mark summer’s beginning and end . . . and now, with a land that has been granted the gift of the rains once more. A healing earth flowers with medicine, and we have plenty of it for which to be grateful now.
~ Aji
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