Today dawned sunny and bright, but the wind will not release its grip, and the chill cuts deep.

Any sign of a tangible warm-up is almost a week away, and even then, if the winds remain, it won’t feel much like the latter half of May. The one saving grace is that the lows, at least, are supposed to be some ten degrees warmer than they are now, so we might at least be able to plant without worrying about everything freezing overnight.

In the meantime, there’s always more work to be done, but it’s hard to do in the middle of a gale. For much of this week, even nightfall has not saved us, as the trickster winds, once only the province of the daylight hours, persist even in the dark.

Still, it’s a relief to be indoors at day’s end, to be warm by the fire, to know that dusk flowers with the last of the light, and the earth rests at angles to the night.

Today’s featured masterwork embodies all of these gifts in mysteriously beautiful form. It’s a cuff wrought using traditional techniques, an homage to the bold geometric Indigenous Art Deco styles of a century ago, all of it coaxed from the silver freehand and set with a truly unique stone. From its description in the Cuffs and Links and Bangles section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:

At Angles to the Night Cuff Bracelet

The fire of the setting sun and the clouds of the gathering storm move at angles to the night, ceding space to the violet skies here, drawing a veil across moon and stars there. With this extraordinary new Art Deco cuff, Wings pays tribute to sun and storm and fall of dark, all in the elegantly geometric lines and spaces of the Art Deco styles of a century past. The band is wrought of a medium-weight gauge of sterling silver, cut classically wide and hand-scored down either edge to form a pair of narrow borders.  Between each border and edge, alternating arcs like clouds and crescent moons trace the slender space; in between the borders, long, elegant, deeply incised straight lines are scored freehand, an echo of old Deco architectural lines. At either end, above lines meeting in a low point, a single diamond shape, an Eye of Spirit, is stamped at the center, repoussé-fashion, its center rising in convex relief from the band’s surface. The focal at the center is formed of a very old cabochon cut into an oblong rectangular shape, rounded on the corners and set into a hand-made low-profile bezel with a backing flanged at top and bottom, the extended edges saw-cut and scalloped freehand and stamped in radiant motifs. The stone itself is of unknown origin, but we reliably believe it to be orbicular sugilite in quartz, shades of plum and violet whorled with wine-tinted reds and bits of white cloud. As an old stone, its surface is relatively unrefined, polished but with pitting and natural texture that testify to its age and lack of synthetic treatment. Band is 6″ long by 1-3/8″ wide; setting is 2″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 1-1/2″ long by 3/4″ across at the widest point (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.

Sterling silver; what we reliably believe to be [old] orbicular sugilite in quartz
$1,700 + shipping, handling, and insurance

This cuff is one of my favorites. The stone is amazing, but I love it for the silverwork: big, bold, old-style work, with great sweeping lines and plenty of negative space to set off the repoussé work at each end of the band. It’s solid and substantial, but not unduly heavy on the wrist, and the edges and corners are all beautifully smooth. To call the freehand scorework, all accomplished by chasing a single short chisel-end stamp, “Striking” is to understate its effects significantly; it’s phenomenal silversmithing, deep, consistent, impossibly even.

What frames the stone is striking, too: a simple, low-profile bezel whose backing extends at top and bottom into scalloped arcs that are saw-cut and stamped freehand. They’re punctuated at each corner by tiny ingot overlays — ball beads formed by hand of molten ingot and stamped on their upper surfaces before being precisely overlaid.

And then, of course, there is that stone.

It’s a bit like the one that serves as the focal of the masterwork featured here on Wednesday: virtually the same colors, but arranged differently within the stone. This one, too, has been a part of his inventory for decades, so long now that he has no memory of when or where or how he acquired it; it might have been acquired in trade, with no information given. It’s been equally difficult to determine exactly what its composition is. The tiny patches of white could be calcite, but their icy color and the crystalline effects at their edges suggest white quartz. The swirls of deep purple, a black plum shade, that surround it, coupled with the way it meshes with the deep red in orbicular, almost flower-like shapes, match virtually no archetypal examples of purple and red stones, not even jasper.

But it looks remarkably like sugilite, or it would, were it not for those floral shapes and the presence of white quartz. And lo and behold, a little deep research shows that there is indeed a form known as orbicular sugilite, in which the colors manifest in precisely that way [and, I should note, there is also a substantial amount of low-grade sugilite being marketed as the orbicular variety when in fact it’s not; it’s merely bands of light-hued stone in gray host rock].

This, though? This one is old, big and bold, with a good polish that doesn’t conceal its textural finish, and it’s absolutely haunting, like gazing into the swirling clouds of a stormy twilight.

And, indeed, it’s that very quality that reminds us to acknowledge and appreciate those gifts at day’s end, coming up not so very many hours from now. Dusk flowers with the last of the light, one last gift before fall of night.

~ Aji

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.