The morning haze has settled over the land now, just enough dust in the air to make it shimmer. The trees are still, only the smallest of breezes fluttering the tips of the leaves, but outside the window, the world is ashimmer too with the iridescent vibration of hummingbird wings. Most of the larger bees have departed, leaving only the small silver honeybees to their work, but a small number of butterflies remain, and the recent rains have brought a few dragonflies back to the land.
With August has come the return of an air and earth and sky that is green in flower, aglow in flight.
Today’s featured work embodies the green, the glow, the light, and the flight. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
From the Heart of the Earth Necklace
From the heart of the earth our whole world grows. Wings pays tribute to this evolutionary process with this necklace, a cross that is not a cross, but the embodiment of elemental forces and nurturing spirits. The pendant’s form is a very old design, one that circumvented colonial insistence on Christianity by appearing to adopt its four-spoked shape — and then adding an extra bar and a curving end to produce the form of a much older spirit: that of Dragonfly, a pollinator, a messenger, a symbol of romantic love and life’s abundance. Here, Wings has honored another old adaptation of the style, turning the curved tail at the base of the lowest spoke into a stylized heart. Above the heart, the pendant extends upward and outward to the Four Sacred Directions, each of the remaining five spokes stamped with a single thunderhead symbol pointing inward toward the center, a sign of the rain that keeps our Earth herself alive. Above the top spoke, the hand-made bail flowers into a lush green peridot; at the base in the center of the heart, the place of emergence, two tiny hand-stamped flowers are wedded into the form of a butterfly, a small spirit rising from its own place of emergence to continue the processes of pollination and prosperity. The cross is made of solid fourteen-gauge silver, and hangs 2-5/8″, the bail 3/4″ (the pendant is 3-3/8″ in total length; 1-1/8″ across at the widest point); the stone is 3/8″ long; the pendant hangs from an 18″ sterling silver snake chain (dimensions approximate).
Sterling silver; peridot
$1,150 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Despite the forecast, yesterday’s clouds brought only a short, sharp shower — but it delivered a sunset of extraordinary color and fire. Dawn this day was only slightly paler, emerging from behind the remnant clouds in shades of amber instead of coral, silver instead of gold.
Meanwhile, the grass stands tall and the leaves are alive again with the refractive colors of precious gems: emerald, jade, peridot, a kaleidoscopic flash of radiant green light. The air is alive with the buzz of hummingbirds at the feeders and the few dragonflies willing to brave the drought in search of water. There is the promise of rain in the forecast, a bit already present in the atmosphere, too.
And for the moment at the dawn of this new month, there is hope.
~ Aji
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