For much of the world, today is Good Friday, prelude to a long and sacred weekend among those who practice Christianity; it’s also Passover, another sacred period, for those who practice Judaism. Neither is our tradition, although we’re certainly conversant with the stories and traditions surrounding them, as well as with many of the Pagan practices many that serve as the root of this holiday the dominant culture calls “Easter.”
With today’s featured item, I could draw several symbolic analogies to all three: the grass green and blood red hues lend themselves to all sorts of metaphorical religious imagery for this weekend, particularly for the former two. But because they are not ours, it would be wildly inappropriate to co-opt such imagery for ourselves (even though many Natives, including in our own families, do observe the Christian religious holiday). The secular side of Easter, however, is something that has become a sort of shared seasonal marker for people of all faiths and traditions, and so plenty of those of us of other backgrounds share family meals, a switch to more colorful clothing, and the fun of Peeps and chocolate bunnies and brightly-dyed Easter eggs.
I love the elaborately patterned Easter eggs (both real and glass or ceramic) found in some European cultures, bands of complex repeating designs in intense and vibrant colors circling each oval. I’ve never had the knowledge or skill to create anything like them; my own expertise with colored eggs mostly topped out with the fizzy tablets in the Paas Easter Egg Coloring Kits we had as kids. Back then, my goal was always to make the blue less robin’s-egg and more indigo, as close to royal blue as possible (which was to say, of course, not very; turquoise was about the extent of it), and then follow suit with the other shades. But if I were to try it now, I think I’d take the chance to color the eggs in shades as close to those actually found in Nature as possible: robin’s-egg blue, aster purple, rose pink, daisy yellow, grass green. Or, perhaps, combine them as we used to do to create new colors, using the red and yellow tablets to create the brilliant orange of our skies and dusk and dawn.
Colors, perhaps, like those found in the earrings shown above.
Even the pattern looks like something you might find on an old-fashioned Easter egg: a diamond drawn with one of those waxy white crayons, so that it shows through the dye. But the textures are something else entirely. To me, they also look equally like a bit of brightly-colored spring fabric, the kind suitable for dress regalia: the small chips of serpentine, the color of the new grass, fitted together like a woven blanket; the brilliant orange-red coral in its natural state, the pores and pits defined to eye and touch alike; all set inot and trimmed with sterling silver like the pale morning light. From the pair’s description in the Other Artists: Miscellaneous Jewelry gallery here on the site:
Small squares of spring green serpentine are carefully inlaid around a central diamond-shaped piece of natural coral edged in sterling silver. By Priscilla Aguilar (Kewa Pueblo), each is backed by banded green serpentine and trimmed with a sterling silver bezel.
Sterling silver; green serpentine; coral; banded serpentine
$235 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Now on sale at $100 off: $135 + shipping, handling, and insurance
In the weeks leading up to the winter holidays, we put the last several pairs in our inventory of Priscilla’s inlay earrings on sale — rather drastically so. Most of them sold at that time; this one of only two pairs remaining. The other pair is less square, longer, slimmer, and more rectangular, and in those robin’s-egg and turquoise shades of blue I mentioned above. And, yes, both remain at the sale price.
It’s a bit late to order them to complement an Easter outfit, but it’s still early days for Spring. And the combination of colors, textures, and materials will lend a hint of seasonal renewal to the mood of the day, no matter the season or the weather.
~ Aji
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