Autumn is a threshold season: summer not yet wholly gone; winter not yet come. In this place, fifty-degree temperature swings in the course of a single day are common; so, too, are days that begin with sun and end with snow, or vice versa. Yesterday was spectacularly warm, the high seventy or more.
Today, the sun is warm, but the wind is fierce, its edge as sharp as any scalpel and twice as cold.
And yet, here on our little bit of land, green earth still predominates against the backdrop of a bright blue sky.
But even so, the days grow short and the shadows long, and the light becomes increasingly precious. Now, sun and moon and stars all three bear the gifts of warmth and safety and illumination: in a threshold season, a mediating light.
Now, as we await the descent of the sun and the rise of moon’s cool glow, it seems a perfect time for Wings’s newest work, a pair of earrings completed only this afternoon. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
A Mediating Light Earrings
Like sun and stars, the moon is a mediating light, one that intercedes on our behalf between earth and sky, between the seasons, between the shadows and the dark. Wings pays tribute to the centrality of her power with his latest earrings, a pair hand-wrought in a traditional blossom design. The sterling silver settings are hand-cut, vintage-style, in a rough orb shape, their edges only lightly shaped to evoke an older style, then hand-stamped in flowering rays to enhance their shimmering light. At the center of each drop, a brilliantly faceted Indian rainbow moonstone rests in a plain low-profile bezel, each cabochon refracting gold and pink and purple and blue amid silvery-white light. Each center stone is ringed by a collection of eight small round cabochons per earring: a random mix of mostly turquoise stones in varying shades of blue and green with a wide diversity of matrix patterns, representing the colors of earth and sky and season; one earring also bears a single bright green jade cabochon asa counterpoint to the lime green turquoise opposite it. Each earring hangs suspended from delicate sterling silver wires. Earrings are 1″ across by 1-1/8″ long (excluding wires); small cabochons are 18″ across; moonstone cabochons 3/8″ across.
Sterling silver; Indian rainbow moonstone; blue turquoise; green turquoise; jade
$425 + shipping, handling, and insurance
They are a simple design, and an old one, too, wrought in the vintage style that evokes traditional, rougher-hewn works from a time when tools were less refined. They evoke other motifs, as well: the blossom design, life in the desert in the form, here, of earth and sky and light. But at their centers, a pair of fabulously faceted moonstones from India serve as simulacra of the moon that shines over Indians on the other side of the world, catching and holding and refracting a nearly-electric light in the colors of the natural spectrum.
On this day, as the wind howls and the air grows colder with the lengthening shadows, as Father Sun drops ever more rapidly to his rest, we await the night’s illumination, the spirit that mediates between earth and sky. With today’s work, it’s possible to carry that spirit, and its power, beyond thresholds of time and season.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
