We awakened this morning to slate-gray skies to east and south, a hint of pale pink to north and west, all courtesy of a light new-falling snow. Outside the bathroom window, the aspens on the north side of the house were studded with bright ornaments: scrub and piñon jays in the turquoise shades of yesterday’s feathered skies, plump and puffed up for warmth; the glossy jet of a few contented crows; and grays lit with brilliant golds of the evening grosbeaks, known here as the chokecherry birds, off their usual migratory path and here four to five months out of season.
The snow had begun falling around 3 AM, as I knew from having come downstairs to let the dogs out briefly and rebuild a fire. It apparently fell intermittently over the next few hours, giving us about an inch by dawn. Already, the skies are clearing to the west, and by mid-afternoon, the snow will be gone, melted and already absorbed by a still-thirsty earth.
And in all likelihood, the feathered skies will return, shades of turquoise and cornflower and indigo swept by mares’ tails and the smoke of a thousand prayers.
Today’s featured work is the very embodiment of such skies, blue to their four corners and finely webbed with a mix of clouds and trailing smoke. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Feathered Skies Cuff Bracelet
Feathered skies are a bit of heavenly magic: a turquoise expanse aflutter with mares’-tail clouds like the down of the feathers that send our own prayers skyward. Wings catches the blue and the clouds and the feathers, too, and braids them together in this cuff bracelet in electric blues and greens and shimmering silver. The band is hand-milled in a random, repeating feather pattern, down plumes racing across the arc of the light. Across the top stretch five square Skystone cabochons, bezel-set and arranged in a graduated pattern: one large brilliant blue-green square at the center, high-set and aswirl in shades of golden and coppery matrix; on either side, a somewhat smaller pair of squares of rich teal with a mysterious black chert matrix, and all three flanked at either end with small squares of what are likely Bisbee green turquoise, a rich seafoam shade with hints of blue speckled with a tiny coppery siltstone matrix. The inner band features gracefully scalloped stampwork in a repeating flowing-water design along either edge. Band is 6″ long by 1″ across; large focal cabochon is 5/8″ across; medium cabs are 1/2″ across; and small end cabs 3/8″ across (dimensions approximate). Side view shown below.
Sterling silver; indigo and teal-green turquoise (probably Turquoise Mountain, Cloud Mountain, and Bisbee, respectively)
$1,100 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a very simple work in an eminently traditional design, a mix of water and sky, earth and light, and the silky silvered down feathers of the beings who carry our prayers to the spirits. The band is wide but lightweight and flexible, easily adjusted, even as the hand-milled feather pattern stands out in sharply textured relief. The stones, squares all, are a stunning mix of blues and greens just like the winter skies. All were unidentified by their respective suppliers, but the focal cabochon was, if memory serves, acquired with a lot of newish material from Arizona’s Turquoise Mountain Mine: a perfect blend of blues and greens, patched with bold golden-hued matrix, the stone itself stippled and studded with a dusting of off-white host rock throughout. The medium-sized squares that flank it were sold in a lot of smaller cabs, and while they were unlabeled, we suspect Cloud Mountain turquoise, from China’s Hubei District: fine, hard stone in deep, rich teal blues, webbed with a bold inky matrix. The two smallest squares came from Wings’s collection of old, old turquoise cabochons, material that has been in his inventory for years. Based on the particular shade of aged green-blue and the soft stippling, patching, and webbing of deep red siltstone throughout, we suspect Arizona’s Bisbee, although they are too old for anyone to say for sure now.
Taken together, they create a beautiful band of high desert skies: blue to the four corners, held aloft by the strength of our prayers and the power of the spirits.
In these dangerous days, that makes the skies much like our own existence. But despite the best efforts colonialism’s worst has to offer, we live, still. So do they.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
