Today we have bright blue skies, abundant sun filtered through and around a fine webwork of white clouds scattered here and there . . . and a bitterly cold wind driving hard from the west, turning what looks like a beautiful spring day into a remembrance of winter.
It’s a blessing that the spirits of this season are hardier ones than we humans, or we would have none of summer’s adornments at all.
But while my aging bones break and joints dislocate beneath the air’s icy pressure, those of the trees are more flexible: They bend, they dance, they flower and leaf despite the battering force of the trickster wind.
The larger pear tree is at last nearly in full flower; the scant surviving leaves on the weeping willows seem lush compared to a few days ago. Last evening, the swallows appeared, their tiny forms spiraling through sunset skies and across the face of the rising moon, just off full. These are the spirits, the signs, the dreams of summer, petals open to the longer light.
Today’s featured work embodies this opening to the skies of longer days, deeper blues, the webwork clouds of the rainy season. It’s one of Wings’s newer works, blossoming with extraordinary beauty, power, and medicine. From its description in the Accessories Gallery here on the site:
Dreams In Flower Bolo
Beyond the reaches of a cloud-webbed sky, other planes and spirits hold the power of visions and prophecy, of our dreams in flower in this world. With this new and eminently traditional bolo, Wings honors petals and sky and the web that filters our dreams, allowing them all the power and potential and possibility of fulfillment for a better world. The work is built around an extraordinary concha that found its first form in one of Wings’s old concha belts, one that has remained permanently in his personal collection. It’s an outsized classic oval concha, deeply scored, stamped, and scalloped with petal-like edges entirely freehand, with three nested ovals of stampwork layered inside three clean, evenly scored border ovals. The scored loops create a slight upward gradient, and the center is domed by hand, repoussé-fashion, to transform a flat heavy oval of sterling silver into a perfectly three-dimensional concha. Atop the center, a giant freeform cabochon of ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, a gorgeous hard deep blue with an inky blue-black matrix of fine, tight spiderwebbing. This spectacular stone is set into a similarly finely serrated saw-toothed bezel and edged with twisted silver, the whole elevated slightly above the concha at the center via a short sterling silver base. The concha is strung on tightly-woven black leather cord, cut long to fit nearly any wearer’s neck, ending in serrated sterling silver tips that terminate in ridged saucer beads above a tiny round bead. Bolo is 3.75″ long by 3″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 2″ long by 1.5″ across at the widest point; bolo tips are 2-1/8″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point (bead); and the bolo cord, including tips, is 58″ long total (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain blue spiderweb turquoise; braided black leather
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this work, one that has been through other iterations and identities, none of which quite fit the spirit that animates it. The concha is from one of Wings’s old belts, one he retained in his private collection; he was never entirely happy with the belt, and eventually took it apart to use the conchas for other works. A couple of them were long ago transformed into individual belt buckles, each centered by its own solitary and spectacular cabochon. This one he initially turned into a bow guard replica — not intended to repel actual arrows, although the concha was certainly large enough, but to function as spiritual armor, a reminder of what protects us from those arrows we cannot see.
It was set on gloriously soft, buttery-gold moosehide, and it was beautiful.
And still, he was never quite satisfied with it, always eyeing it, occasionally removing it from its case and turning it over in his hands, contemplating its constituent parts, but always returning it to the case.
Until now.
This time, he saw the bolo clearly, fully formed in his mind’s eye, and he set to work, taking apart the bow guard but preserving concha and cabochon as he had already paired them. He added the necessary findings to the concha’s underside, strung it with heavy braided leather, and added a pair of saucer-bead tips, an old style that suits the silverwork perfectly.
But back to the cabochon for a moment . . . and the concha setting that holds it. The stone, as the description notes, is Chinese turquoise, a type of turquoise that too many colonial dealers scorn because they regard its origins as inferior. This stone? Is a truly phenomenal specimen of the mineral, as fine as anything found on any other continent, including this one. It’s large, cut freeform without much doming, but it’s hard material, the turquoise so deep a blue as to be nearly indigo, and the fine, tight spiderwebbing of the matrix an inky blue-black. It’s extraordinary, and it’s perfect for the outsized, heavy-gauge silver setting, hand-scalloped and edged in concentric layers of fine freehand stampwork, that holds it aloft.
Between the deep blues of the stone, the warm, aged Florentine finish of the concha, and the jet-black braid that hold them, it’s the perfect masterwork for these days leading up to summer. It’s talismanic, as though concha and stone still hold all their old protective force, but otherworldly, too: a work of dreams in flower, petals open to the longer light of the summer still to come.
That, too, is protective, talismanic, medicine — the knowledge of the warming winds, the rainy season, and the promise of abundance to come.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
