Yesterday’s stormy weather brought us nothing of substance: a few darkening clouds, a few flashes of lightning, the scent of ozone and petrichor from a tantalizing distance, no more.
Today, the clouds are moving in again — no lightning, no rising wind, no scent of rain, but all the stormy blues of a buffalo sky, curly white manes rising high above bases dark as slate: the herd, gathering, preparing to make its own thunder.
Perhaps today we shall be blessed; perhaps today, the forecast will hold true.
It’s midday, and as I write, the leaves begin to make a liar of me: rustling, quaking, dancing on a rising breeze. I wouldn’t call it a wind yet; it’s still too soft around the edges. But it’s brisker than it was only moments ago, and the white of the thunderhead towers is being overtaken by the darker blues now. It creates a space for hope to flower, and for the moment, that is enough.
There are days when I consider altering the week’s schedule of posts to feature something different . . . and then there are days when the existing choice seems prescient somehow, or at least serendipitous. So it is with this week’s Friday Feature, one of Wings’s current masterworks, and one of his most powerful ones — an old-school, traditional collar-style necklace featuring five separate pendants, all set with spectacular stones in dazzling freehand silverwork, cascading from a strand of extraordinary beads. It’s a one-of-a-kind masterpiece that could only be brought into being by Wings’s hands. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Buffalo Sky Necklace
We live beneath a Buffalo sky, mane made of dawn, a cloud-webbed blue and a gathering storm riding Thunderbird’s wings in his wake. With this extraordinary old-style collar necklace, Wings pays tribute to our beautiful elder brother, to the skies and the water and the wingéd spirits that drive it to the earth. The necklace consists of no fewer than five separate pendants, three of royal lapis and two of natural Fox turquoise, all set into hand-made bezels saw-cut and stamped entirely freehand, and strung on a cascading strand of coordinating gemstone beads of truly phenomenal quality. The focal pendant is formed of a shield cabochon of royal lapis lazuli in a perfect cobalt blue shot through with the stardust shimmer of iron pyrite, set into aa hand-made scalloped bezel edged with twisted silver, the bezel backing extending beyond in a scalloped pattern reminiscent of Buffalo’s mane, each curl stamped with a single sunrise motif to frame the deep blue of the dawn. Flanking the focal are a pair of gorgeous large ovals of natural Fox turquoise, the stones the shade of the western sky at morning, stippled with “clouds” of off-white host-rock and unusually red patches of iron pyrite matrix. Each is set into its own scalloped bezel edged in twisted silver, the saw-cut bezel backing extending into the same scalloped sunrise motif on all sides. Finally, at either end of the string of pendants, two more incredible square cabochons of royal blue lapis lazuli sit on a bed of dried cedar shavings, framed in scalloped bezels edged in twisted silver, the extended backings rounded with freehand cut-work on all four sides, each tab stamped in old-style feather-fan motifs. Each pendant hangs from a hand-cut, flared bail stamped with a single four-directions motif reminiscent of the famed Zia symbol, the spokes extending around a central heart. Every pendant is framed on the bead strand by a pair of outsized spheres of natural lapis lazuli in chrysocolla, with alternating segments of sterling silver doughnut rondels and either iron pyrite (beneath the lapis) or high-grade turquoise rounds (beneath the turquoise), to allow the bails to sit properly. Connecting each pendant are segments of extraordinary ultra-high-grade royal lapis lazuli orbs, polished so perfectly that their surfaces are nearly translucent, alternating with tiny sterling silver doughnut rondels. Moving upward, the beads form gradients of size and color, consisting of more of the royal lapis alternating with iron pyrite and more of the turquoise (likely Persian, based on color, pattern, and value), with the silver rondels serving as spacers; The whole strand is anchored at either end by sterling silver round beads. The buffalo pendant with bail is 2-3/4″ long; without, 2-1/4″ long by 1-5/8″ across at the widest point; all five bails are 3/4″ long by 5/8″ across at the widest point; the lapis shield cabochon is 1-5/8″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; the turquoise pendants with bails are 2-3/8″ long; without bails, 1/3/4″ long by 1-5/8″ across at the widest point; cabochons are 1-1/4″ long by 7/8″ across at the widest point; square lapis pendants with bails are 2-1/8″ long; without bails, 1-9/16″ long by 1/3/4″ across; square cabochons are 15/16″ square; bead strand is 26″ long excluding findings, but hangs shorter because of the horizontal space taken up by the pendant arrangement (all dimensions approximate). Other views, including close-ups of each pendant, are shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendants: Sterling silver; royal lapis lazuli; natural Fox turquoise; dried cedar shavings
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
Beads: High-grade old lapis lazuli in chrysocolla; ultra-high-grade royal lapis lazuli;
high-grade blue turquoise (likely Persian); iron pyrite; sterling silver
$4,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The turquoise cabochons are large, domed, glossy, and beautiful, an ethereal mix of alpine desert skies and earthy, inky matrix. The blue is the exact shade of a robin’s egg, that archetypal shade that has always been the hallmark of the region’s most classic turquoise. But these are no solid-blue ovals, oh, no: These are jewels of magic and mystery and medicine.
Here, of course, turquoise is the Skystone, and with good reason. But turquoise manifests in so many different patterns, some bold, others subtle, and these two gems seem to combine them all. There’s precious little real spiderwebbing in them, but plenty of matrix: off-white host-rock stippling; golden-hued veins and patches of coppery bronze inclusions; blue-black lines that feather across the surface like ink in spilled water; smaller patches of black chert, like polished jet. Both stones seem map-like, and yet, you feel that you could get lost in their depths, entering into a world reflective of our own, but very, very different.
So it is with visions and dreams.
So it is, too, with that mysterious gem known as royal lapis.
The two square cabochons came from the same source, a very different one from that of the shield-cut cabochon at the center. But all three, Buffalo himself and the two framing beveled squares, are all manifest in that classic lapis shade of blue, some confounding unique blend of royal, cobalt, and indigo in one marbled, whorled whole.
But while Buffalo’s great head is framed by a mane of clouds backlit by a rising sun, the square cabochons rest in bezels that channel Eagle’s power: old-style symbolism of feather fans on three sides, beneath flowing-water motifs on the upper flange, all four evoking the work of prayer and ceremony.
And these, too, are the imagery and visions and the iconography of dreams, and of prophecy fulfilled and yet to come.
It’s why all five stones are set on beds of dried cedar, each one backed by its own prayer and offering.
I won’t recount the beads in the strand here; they’re listed in the description above. But I will take a moment to note their otherworldly beauty and quality. The lapis spheres are so flawless, and so flawlessly cut and polished, that they look like glass; the turquoise is impossibly clear, a perfect sky blue found only a few places on earth.
And the old chrysocolla orbs bind the two together, just as our cosmos and creator spirits bind together earth and sky, that we may live and thrive.
As I write, the sky outside the window shifts: blue on moment, white the next, gray the next; one minute, the sun rides high and bold, and the next, it recedes behind another bank of clouds. It’s hot, but the wind holds fall’s sharper edge, and it’s impossible to tell, at this moment, whether the clouds that surround us will deliver the respite the earth needs so badly, or decide once more to pass us by.
But for this moment, we have the stormy blues of a buffalo sky around us on all sides, and so we have space for hope.
~ 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.
