Despite the artificial lengthening of the days two weekends ago, time remains in short supply here. It’s complicated by the fact that we currently occupy that seasonal netherworld, neither winter by the calendar or climate, nor yet fully immersed in spring. The mercury swings wildly between ten-degree lows and 60-degree highs, sometimes on the same day, and yet even those highs remain cold thanks to the winds that blast through here daily in their eagerness to be free onf the barrier of the mountains to the east.
There remains no accurate descriptor for this time of year in this place, no one-word label that truly fits. We are left to navigate it as best we can, a process that often involves, in very literal terms, a concerted effort simply to stay on our feet in the face of the gale. For now, true spring seems but a dream, a vague hope, a promise held out tantalizingly before us in the new green of the grass, one that is broken daily by the return of the icy air.
And so Wings’s latest work feels like a dream of its own — or perhaps more accurately, a vision of things to come: a reminder that the warmth will return, eventually, and with it, more green than we can remember after so many months of dormancy. It’s the first in a new group of earrings that we’ll be featuring in the days to come. and these are positively electric. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
Spring Dreams Earrings
By winter’s end, our dreams are filled with the signs and symbols of spring, of lengthened light and warmth and green. Wings captures this feeling of wistful hope given form and shape and life with these elegant earrings. Each is anchored by a square cabochon of brilliant lime jade, turned at an angle to assume a diamond’s shape. A pair of sterling silver jump rings link each stone to a dangling pendant that shimmers and sways in the light. Each pendant is cut, freehand, from sterling silver in an hourglass-like shape that evokes the feeling of a dancing figure. At the center of each is a single small overlay, hand-cut in a diamond shape to complement the stones: Eyes of Spirit, symbols of wisdom and signs of visions and of dreams, ready to help transform the promise of the stones’ intense green fire into the reality of renewal and rebirth.
Sterling silver; lime jade
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Jade is a stone most often associated with China, although it is found, in various forms, in many parts of the world. Since time immemorial, indigenous Chinese artisans have used jade for art, for jewelry, for statuary, for ceremonial and sacred purposes. It is a stone we’ve explored here in the past, and it appears in a wide array of colors and shades (not all of them green). But there is one form of jade that manifests in a brilliantly clear light green, with slight undercurrents of yellow and an electric intensity that hints at phosphorescence. It’s a spring green, one that captures the color of new grass and weds it to the very light itself. The Chinese call it “lime jade,” and at this time of year, it’s a perfect stone to wear when one needs to summon the feeling of warmth and light and renewal.
On this day, when we can expect the afternoon skies to turn brown and the air gray with blowing dirt, when the temperatures will feel twenty degrees colder to the skin, when it feels as though spring is a broken promise, the calendar’s own cruel joke, the color and imagery of today’s work counsels patience. Spring is more than a dream, and its vision of renewal and rebirth is being actualized before our eyes, even if it’s a bit hard to see in the dust-filled air just now.
~ 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.
