The haze is down a bit today, albeit not gone. Given the ongoing high winds, though, we know a change of direction is all that will be required for its return.
For the moment, winds notwithstanding, we’re just happy to be able to see the mountains clearly once more, to have the gift, once again, of illuminating skies. It’s a marked difference in the latter from yesterday, the blue veiled in a gray-brown pall of dirt and smoke. Even after fall of dark, the haze remained, turning the full moon rusty and its nearest star blood red.
It feels cooler again today, despite the mercury registering in the mid-seventies; the winds see to that. It’s still hard to believe that summer is just around the corner, given the distinct lack of warmth in the air. It’s yet one more sign of the disruptions that attend a climate in collapse . . . and one more sign of the urgency with which we need to address the work of remediation.
We cannot say we were not warned: The spirits of these lands have been sounding the alarm for some years now. World-wide, that alarm has been sounding longer, louder, more intensely than here; we have in fact been lucky to have remained insulated from so many of its worst effects for so long.But those spirits continue to speak, and it’s long past time for the rest of the world, those in authority who can effect the needed changes, to heed them.
Here, such messengers assume the form of our non-human relatives: animals, birds, smaller creatures still; plants, flowers, trees; even the wind itself, and the storm, and the light. All of them speak and sing the words of prophecy that we need to hear and understand, if only humanity will listen. It might seem strange to outsiders, this notion that such forces speak to us, but they do. It’s why we sing to the seeds and the plants that grow from them; why we stop to listen to the whispered notes of the butterfly’s song.
That last, of course, is not something we can hear over the fierce shriek of the winds. But on a calm and quiet summer’s day, when the air is perfectly still, listen closely when a butterfly floats past: You’ll hear the faintest sounds as it speaks in its own way.
This week’s Friday Feature contains its own tribute to such small spirits, to the illumination they help to impart. It’s an old-style traditional belt, one studded with a mix of twenty-five separate conchas — twelve wrought in the classic scalloped oval style, punctuated by thirteen old-school butterfly conchas. From its description in the Belts Gallery here on the site:
Illuminating Skies Butterfly Concha Belt
Butterflies are small but powerful spirits, visionary and prophetic, who wing their way to our world across illuminating skies. Wings summons the spirit of Butterfly and of the skies it inhabits, across this silver and turquoise cascade of this traditional concha belt. Wrought in an old and archetypal style, it features twelve separate classic conchas separated by thirteen old-style “butterfly” conchas, with a pair of the latter flanking the buckle at either end. Each classic concha is cut and scalloped around the edges, entirely freehand; lightly domed, repoussé-fashion; and meticulously hand-stamped in a highly detailed traditional design of concentric ovals that repeats across each piece. The stampwork begins with hand-scored lines radiating outward into small sunrise symbols, all chased in a clockwise fashion around the inner oval. The next oval is formed of a flowering pattern separated by tiny hoops — three upward-reaching petals of light flanking small perfect orbs on either side, forming the last line of stampwork on the gently sloping domed portion of the concha. Where the doming ends to flare into the scalloped edge, Wings has detailed it with labor-intensive chasing, tiny accent marks creating perfect definition along the flowing line of the oval. Outward from the chased line, a larger sunrise symbol rises toward the edge of each petal-like scallop. At the center of each oval concha rests a small round cabochon of spiderweb turquoise, set in a plain low-profile bezel, each stone a shade of robin’s-egg blue matrixed with tiny coppery and inky blue-black lines, some with translucent wisps of spring green floating over the surface. The butterfly conchas are hand-stamped in a traditional flaring design, wings at top and bottom, their entire pleated surfaces domed, repoussé-fashion, to give them a three-dimensional appearance. The buckle is hand-scored inward from the edge to create a narrow border; inside the border, the center is hand-hammered with scores, perhaps hundreds, of tiny separate strikes of the jeweler’s hammer, then hand-scored outward from the center in a radiant motif. Along the outer border, tiny lodge symbols against a radiant sun repeat along all four sides, with slightly larger lodge symbols sitting solitary at each corner. At the buckle’s center rests an oval cabochon of beautiful robin’s-egg blue turquoise, probably from the Montezuma District, with a beautifully abstract matrix in bold coppery-red spiderwebbing. The belt itself is heavy brown-black leather, hand-cut, hand-split, hand-beveled along the edges, and hand-stamped down its entire length in a radiant sun motif. The belt is finished off with brown-black braided leather figure-eight ties that terminate in sterling silver tips with tiny globe-like ends. The belt is 52″ long and the leather strip is 11/16″ wide; the oval conchas are 2-1/16″ long by 1-7/8 inches high; the round center cabochons are 7/16″ across; the butterfly conchas are 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; the buckle is 2-5/16″ long by 1-3/4″ high; the oval center cabochon is 1″ long by 5/8″ high; the silver tips on the ties are 1-7/8″ long; the ties themselves are 7″ long (all dimensions approximate). Close-up views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; spiderwebbed blue turquoise (most likely from the Royston and Montezuma Districts)
$7,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Notes: Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply.
The leather belt is a standard length; a hand-made belt in a specialty size may be ordered
(either shorter or longer) for an additional $325 charge.
The butterfly conchas on this belt provide a dimensional, deeply textural contrast to the stampwork and saw-work of the oval conchas and the buckle. Wings chose explicitly to create the buckle in a different shape than the conchas, each setting off the others beautifully.
The rectangular geometry of it also provides the perfect framing for the focal, an extraordinary oval of natural American turquoise, likely Montezuma. The Art Deco look and feel of the radiant freehand scorework that emanates from behind the stone pays tribute to old-style Indigenous silverwork from this region of a century and more ago.
The classic oval conchas are a marvel, too: each one saw-cut individually, entirely freehand; each stamped freehand, too, in the same concentric ovals of radiant and geometric motifs. The whole work is an homage to the Indigenous Art Deco designs of the 1920s, in a thoroughly unique and contemporary style perfect for any occasion now.
It’s also a design whose animating spirits have much to teach us. In truth, they have been teaching us all along; the failure is on humanity’s collective part, not theirs. But we all have a responsibility to listen to the whispered notes of the butterfly’s song . . . and then to act accordingly. There is a long hard road ahead, and much work along it, if we are to save this world now.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
