After several days of clouds, today dawned in accordance with the forecast and the season, awash in gold and silver light. Now, patchy wisps of gray have begun to move in, drifting slowly over the sun, intermittently obscuring its glow.
After two straight autumns of unseasonal warmth and literal drought, we have become unsure what to do with more changeable weather.
It’s not just that, of course; usually, save one or two decent-sized storms, October is a month of almost indescribable clarity, the skies vanishingly free of clouds, the light radiant, if not literally what one might call ascendant. That latter feature is not an infirmity, either; it’s precisely this lowered sharp angle of the light that creates the month’s uniquely ethereal beauty here.
Even so, our present clouds move with the sun in a dance older than time, producing mysteries of light as ephemeral as memory, and yet as unbreakably bound together as our own spirits, forever linked to the ancestors and to the generations to come.
It is, in other words, a perfect day for today’s featured work, one that holds mysteries of its own braided into its form and shape and spirit. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Braided Suns Cuff Bracelet
We live in a world of braided suns, a sacred hoop of the seasons strung around orbs of golden light. Wings honors the sun in all its angles and phases with this cuff, heavy nine-gauge sterling silver annealed to a velvety finish, hand-stamped in arcing conjoined sunrise patterns set opposite each other to form braids of light. Round tiger’s eye cabochons, brilliantly chatoyant and infused with rich color gradients from deep bronzed brown to bright yellow gold, are set into saw-toothed bezels equidistant along the band’s length, a sun for each season in varying shades of dark and light. The edges of the band are hand-filed silky-smooth, and the inner band is adorned with arced sunrises chased along either edge, then linked across the band’s expanse by diagonal shafts of light erupting at the center in flowering radiance, the flowing lines all hand-struck to be meticulously equidistant and at identical angles. The band is 6.5″ long by 3/8″ across; the cabochons are 9/16″ across (dimensions approximate). Views of sides and inner band shown below.
Sterling silver; tiger’s eye
$1,475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I have never much been one for tiger’s eye — not because I don’t like it; I very much do — but because my personal tastes run more to jewel-toned blues and greens, occasionally spiked with red coral or glowing amber. Browns and yellows have never especially been my colors. But every once in a while, Wings pairs them with silver in a way that speaks deeply to my spirit, as much as any cobalt or emerald shades could ever do.
This is one.
This piece, to me, is the very embodiment of our light here: softly glowing silver, brushed and braided and flowering underneath, set with the shimmering suns that gave this land, once, its reputation as a place of literal gold.
Autumn is a time of memory with a tinge melancholy, but it is also one of joy and fire. It is a time to remember the spirits and ways and to which we are braided and bound, and to do our part to strengthen the hoop.
It is also a time to revel in the mysteries of light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
