When we thinking of the word “forging,” we tend to think of it in a couple of a different contexts. One has to do with metalworking, the creation of heavy metal objects through the application of high heat and great pressure, such as in a blacksmith’s forge,. The other is symbolic: “forging ahead,” as in bulldozing one’s way through some obstacle in pursuit of a goal, whether it’s as tangible as cutting a path through the snow or as metaphorical as jettisoning self-doubt in one’s career.
Both meanings find application in Native silversmithing generally, and in Wings’s work specifically.
Today, we’re going to look one specific type of silversmithing, a form of metalwork shaping known as anticlastic forging.
The dictionary definition of anticlastic is very basic: “[to have] principal curvatures of opposite sign at a given point.” Think of a shallow bowl, one with sides sloping upward on a gentle gradient. Look at the side closest to you, then at the side directly opposite you. These two sides are anticlastic: concavities that mirror each other.
In silversmithing terms, it’s a style that refers to how metal is shaped in a particular piece. We don’t use the word to apply, say, to a miniature bowl, because, well, it’s a bowl: The shape is definitional, inherent in its identity.
But in jewelry? Ah, well, that’s another matter.
Take a look at what is perhaps the most iconic of Native jewelry items, particularly here in the Southwest: the cuff bracelet. Indeed, the cuff is where anticlastic forging is most often used, although there’s no reason why it can’t be put to work in other jewelry forms, as well (and we’ll see a couple of examples here today). But cuffs — those solid bands of metal, often wide, often heavy — are especially well-suited to this sort of shaping, and it’s actually an art form with a long tradition behind it, one that crosses geographic and cultural boundaries fluently.
It is probably the case that, as long as Native artisans have been making metalwork bracelets, some of them have been anticlastic versions. There’s an old saying that there is nothing new under the sun, and, indeed, while the dominant culture finds it tempting to insist on crediting one specific individual with any given “discovery,” the fact of the matter is that the human brain is wired to find certain patterns in its world, and with that, to find certain solutions to problems. It’s how, for example, we see similar art and architecture, and even sometimes similar linguistic terms or meanings and religious or spiritual referents in cultures as diverse as our ancestors here on this continent, in parts of Asia, in the Middle East, in Africa, and even in Northern Europe simultaneously.
With regard to anticlastic forging, it’s a style known to metalsmiths probably since time immemorial. In cuff bracelet form, I’ve seen examples from so-called classical antiquity (which translates to ancient Europe), from southern Asia, and from various parts of Africa, to name only a few. Sometimes the pieces are made from solid metal, as is the case with Wings’s works, but not always. Several years ago, I saw a couple made by a different artisan that were simply metal-framed in the anticlastic shape (think of a cuff with the center cut out of it, so that only the bare outline remains); then the artist took fine bits of metal rope that felt much like fabric and strung them across the frame. At first glance, it looked like a solid brushed-metal anticlastic cuff, but upon closer examination, it had a delicate fibrous quality to it that gave it an ethereal, gossamer air.
Wings began working in the anticlastic style about ten years ago. I still remember when he ordered the mandrel: We had gone out to dinner that evening, and he told me excitedly that he would soon be getting an addition to his collection of smith’s tools that would permit him to create such pieces with ease. Of course, there are more rudimentary ways of creating them — metalsmiths have doing it for millennia, long before the invention of molded hand tools — but now that there is a way expressly to create such works by hand, it’s not especially cost-effective for artists to do it the old hammer-and-tongs way, so to speak. It’s shown in the photo above, with the lightweight mallet he uses to help shape each piece. as you can see, the mandrel itself is shaped into discrete curvatures of varying height and depth and gradient, to allow for use with pieces of variable size and weight.
I need to emphasize one thing here, however: A mandrel is merely a static and stationary tool; there’s nothing powered about it, other than the use of force by Wings’s own hands. Every anticlastic piece he has ever made has been meticulously shaped entirely by hand. Sometimes, it takes repeated forging to work the silver into just the right shape, the sides flowing upward at just the right angle. And it requires an instinctive grasp of geometry on a very fundamental level, one that recognizes not only where and how the angles and gradients need to match, but the proper vantage points from which to apply pressure, and how much of it. It is, truly, forging at angles in a very literal sense.
Sometimes Wings adds only a very small amount of anticlastic shaping — just enough for a hint of motion, of flow. An example is the brass ring at right, what’s known as a “finger cuff.” It works exactly like a cuff bracelet, except that it’s much smaller, and worn on a finger rather than a wrist. As you can see in the photo, the amount of shaping done here is truly minimal, just enough to provide a raised edge on either side of the band.
And, of course, this ring is an example of the process’s utility with metals other than silver.
It works well on brass, on copper, and would work with gold, provided that its purity level is low enough to provide sufficient stability. It’s a method that does require a certain degree of firmness in the metal, as well as enough give to allow it to be reshaped. At left is one of a pair of copper bracelets he made in this style. The one shown at left bore a smooth finish, and was bought by a dear friend. The companion piece was hammered, giving it a antiqued appearance, and it now resides among my own collection (and frequently on my right wrist, one of several copper works that he’s made for me over the years to help with my inflammatory arthritis.
Occasionally, Wings will use anticlastic forging to create something other than a cuff, or combine the process with other silverwork techniques to create an unusually complex piece. We’ll look at an example of each, beginning with the latter.
The cuff shown directly above was one he created some six or eight years ago. in it, he combined traditional stampwork, including a repeating pattern that is a form of chasing, with another technique known as overlay, in which one or more pieces of silver are cut into specific shapes — in this case, a pair of blossom medallions flanking a ledger horse, a stylized animal that is another classic Native art form that we’ve covered here before — and then soldered onto the larger piece, quite literally overlaying it. [We’ve discussed both chasing and overlay here briefly before, and no doubt will do so in greater detail in the future.] The cuff shown above would have been breathtaking even had it been executed as an ordinary flat-band cuff. But Wings wanted something with a sense of motion to match the horse racing across the center of the band, and so he worked the entire piece into an anticlastic cuff of unusual complexity and traditional beautiful.
On pieces like this, however, anticlastic forging gets tricky. The stampwork has little to no effect on it (absent, of course, unusually deep stampwork that goes nearly through to the other side, which can effect the integrity of the band when shaping it). But overlay is another matter entirely. The size and shape, as well as the weight and depth, of the overlay and the slope of cuff’s sides all must be consonant with each other, or the result will be a broken bracelet: The overlay will contract, left, and eventually come free, at least in part. It takes patient attention to detail, as well as a willingness to take time and care, to ensure that each piece is sufficiently flexible to work together, and that they are soldered in such a way that the design will remain securely intact and whole.
This leads us naturally to the next example, in which the finished work is not a cuff at all. Cuffs are, of course, ideal for anticlastic forging precisely because the band is open-ended. This provides room for the angles to flare and flow, without the need to connect them together; it can be done, of course, but it’s not an especially easy task. As with the overlay problem, connecting an anticlastic band into one solid hoop risks breakage. It takes a creative flexibility to match that of the metal itself to form an anticlastic band into a single infinite hoop, like the one shown immediately below:
This was the first anticlastic ring Wings ever created, and he took great pains with its execution. It worked flawlessly, and served as a model for several successive anticlastic rings — and here I refer to actual rings, 360-degree bands, not finger cuffs like the brass one shown above (although he has made several fingers over the years, too). Of all the anticlastic rings he’s created, this, his first, was without a home the longest. It turns out that it was waiting for a friend to notice it . . . and then to let us know. It had to be resized, which, given the band style, was itself a tricky proposition, but by this time, Wings was both conversant and comfortable with the style and what it takes to execute it properly. It now lives in the home for which it was apparently always meant.
At the moment, only a couple of anticlastic works remain in inventory. One is the brass ring above, one that, despite the extra smithing work involved, is one of the least expensive pieces in Wings’s current inventory, thanks to the much lower cost of the metal used. The other work is much more complex, and its creation two scant months ago represented a new level of skill in anticlastic forging. It’s the cuff shown immediately below. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Messenger Anticlastic Cuff Bracelet
Hawk is a messenger: He flies on powerful wings across the thresholds between worlds; his feathers carry our prayers to Spirit. Wings has captured the raptor’s own spirit in this gracefully contoured anticlastic cuff, hand-wrought in the shape of the great bird’s own feather. It shaft is a line of matched thunderhead symbols, spokes reaching outward to cardinal and ordinal directions, tracing the middle of the band at its lowest point. On one side of the midpoint rests a tiny chatoyant tiger’s eye, the view from the vantage point of those of us bound to earth. At the center, a great blue and gold hawk’s eye cabochon, bezel-set and trimmed in twisted silver, symbolizes the power of the view from above. Band is 1.25″ wide; hawk’s eye cabochon is one inch across (dimensions approximate). Other views shown at the link.
Sterling silver; hawk’s eye; tiger’s eye
$1,025 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This work came out of a series of conversations, orders, and commissions. In its first iteration, it was intended to be an ordinary anticlastic cuff, one with smooth, even edges, and featuring a different center stone entirely. It would have been a beautiful piece as planned — a spectacular one, even.
But then Wings and I began discussing symbolism.
The subject of feathers arose: eagle’s and hawk’s feathers, powerful elements of our peoples’ symbologies and spiritual practices. Over the years, he’s created a great many cuffs (and the occasional pendant) in the shape of a feather, complete with center shaft and ajouré feather strands, the cutwork executed with a tiny jeweler’s saw. But each of those was a mostly two-dimensional work, wrought from sheet silver with a flat surface.With this work, he decided that he wanted to try to combine the two styles: an ajouré feather band forged in an elegantly-sloping anticlastic shape.
It took him a couple of tries to get the shaping right, or at least what he considers right; he is, predictably, his own harshest critic. But after two or three revisions, his slow, painstaking smithing paid off: He had produced a one-of-a-kind piece, uniquely his own, that was truly a masterwork. The design of the band led naturally to the choice of a stone wholly different from the one he had originally planned to use — indeed, there was really only one choice, the stone named for a powerful raptor from whom such feathers come, a guardian and guide, an emissary and messenger of the spirits.
This last work perhaps best symbolizes what I meant at the outset when I said that the metaphorical meaning of ‘forging” was applicable to Native silversmithing, and especially to Wings’s own work. One of the lessons that Native people learn early, in virtually every and any context, is that there will be obstacles not present for others. This country’s history over the last half-millennium has made that a given, a simple fact of daily life. Some obstacles are virtually insurmountable.
But we are nothing if not resilient. After centuries as the collective target of concerted attempts at genocide, we are still here, and that simple fact is due to innate strength and resilience, to flexibility and creativity.
Much like the precious metal that is Wings’s chosen medium.
One thing we also all learn early on is that some problems cannot be approached directly. Taking them head-on, we risk battering our selves and our souls against an immovable object. But with the application of a little logic, a little analysis, a little creativity, we can approach problems from other vantage points, finding points of weakness, spaces of ingress and egress, and then proceeding accordingly. It’s a forging at angles of a very different sort, but like Wings’s own works, it is its own kind of masterpiece: one of being.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
