As has been consistently the case lately, the forecast for last night and this day has fizzled spectacularly. A smattering a drops, a few of them thickened into sleet, no more: This is the sum total of our precipitation over the last thirty-six hours.
It doesn’t inspire confidence in the forecast for the rest of the week.
What we do have, predictably, is plenty of wind, bitterly cold, riding hard on a herd of heavy blue-gray clouds. To the northwest, the skies are turquoise; to the southwest, silvery-white. Overhead and encircling the peaks are skies heavy with the weight of snow, slate blue and iron gray webbing that have thus far dusted only those ridgelines and rocky outcrops with white.
But there has been one change over the last day, a small but significant one: The earth is sprouting consistent new green.
It’s early — too early — for the green to be so visible, but that is now to be expected given the warming trends of our ongoing climate collapse. That’s the stark and sobering truth of the matter, and on balance, it’s bad. But the silver lining, like those of the clouds scudding past outside the window now, that there is still green to bloom. There will be grass, and leaves, and eventually, petals, too, and we will be granted a scant and transient but visual respite from the unrelieved grays of dormancy and drought.
Our prayers, our hopes, our dreams these days no doubt seem ordinary to most, but to us, they are the most significant we can conceive: dreams of a wounded Earth healed, of a drought in retreat and abundant rains, of no risk of wildfire but growth in abundance. And these first strands of green represent the year’s first tantalizing possibility of fulfillment: of prayers answered and dreams in flower, and a future of prosperity and abundance ahead.
Today’s featured work, Wings’s newest, is manifest as this possibility, this potential and prayer and promise. From its description in the Accessories Gallery here on the site:
Dreams In Flower Bolo
Beyond the reaches of a cloud-webbed sky, other planes and spirits hold the power of visions and prophecy, of our dreams in flower in this world. With this new and eminently traditional bolo, Wings honors petals and sky and the web that filters our dreams, allowing them all the power and potential and possibility of fulfillment for a better world. The work is built around an extraordinary concha that found its first form in one of Wings’s old concha belts, one that has remained permanently in his personal collection. It’s an outsized classic oval concha, deeply scored, stamped, and scalloped with petal-like edges entirely freehand, with three nested ovals of stampwork layered inside three clean, evenly scored border ovals. The scored loops create a slight upward gradient, and the center is domed by hand, repoussé-fashion, to transform a flat heavy oval of sterling silver into a perfectly three-dimensional concha. Atop the center, a giant freeform cabochon of ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, a gorgeous hard deep blue with an inky blue-black matrix of fine, tight spiderwebbing. This spectacular stone is set into a similarly finely serrated saw-toothed bezel and edged with twisted silver, the whole elevated slightly above the concha at the center via a short sterling silver base. The concha is strung on tightly-woven black leather cord, cut long to fit nearly any wearer’s neck, ending in serrated sterling silver tips that terminate in ridged saucer beads above a tiny round bead. Bolo is 3.75″ long by 3″ across at the widest point; cabochon is 2″ long by 1.5″ across at the widest point; bolo tips are 2-1/8″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point (bead); and the bolo cord, including tips, is 58″ long total (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain blue spiderweb turquoise; braided black leather
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It’s a masterwork, one built around a part of one of Wings’s old works from his private collection, a heavy sterling silver concha in eminently traditional form that never seemed fully to find its place.
Until now.
Once one part of a belt, later the focal point of replica of a traditional bow guard, it began speaking to Wings again a few weeks ago. He took the piece apart, leaving concha and its extraordinary cabochon intact, then refashioned the back to hold a bolo clip. He cut a length of finely braided black leather and strung it through the clip, then added a pair of large, long sterling silver tips, saw-toothed to hold the leather securely and ending in paired bead designs: a three-dimensional ridged saucer atop a tiny silver sphere.
It’s a dazzling work, one that draws the eye inexorably to the concha itself, and its incredible center stone.
The concha itself is its own masterpiece, heavy-gauge sterling silver saw-cut freehand in the classic scalloped-edge oval concha, transforming the shell into a petaled flower in full bloom. It’s scored freehand in three nested ovals near the edge, every seamless curving arc formed with a short, chisel-end stamp repeated over and over and over, via dozens, perhaps scores of strikes of the jeweler’s hammer.
And within the scored lines, and the outer line and the scalloped edge, three layers of heavy, deep, consistent freehand stampwork: at the outside, radiant sunrise motifs; in the middle ring, equally radiant lodge symbols, signifying shelter and protection; and in the inner ring, a bold zigzagging bolt of lighting in a continuous loop, a sign of the rains that here make abundance possible.
And seemingly floating above them all, that spectacular turquoise cabochon.
And it is floating, in a manner of speaking: It’s so outsized, and such an irregular freeform shape, that it would be impossible to secure its bezel safely to the concha’s hand-domed surface. Edges would crack and lift; eventually bezel and/or stone might be lost or otherwise damaged irreparably.
And so Wings elevated it: The fine serration of the saw-toothed bezel, the edging of twisted silver, all are attached to a backing soldered securely to the top of a very small post, set into the top of the concha itself. By this means, bezel and stone stay intact, able hold the integrity of their shape free of risk of detachment or fracture.
Because a stone of this beauty and quality should never be subject to fracture. It’s a truly phenomenal cabochon, large and irregularly shaped, with rounded edges and a flat surface — hard material, with deep intense color that rivals anything found on this land mass. It was pulled from the earth of the Cloud Mountain Mine in China’s Hubei District, and while that area produces (just like many areas in what is now called the U.S.) a wide variety of material, much of it no better than chalk, it’s also the source for some of the finest, most beautiful turquoise now in existence.
This is one such specimen: the stone the deepest teal blue, approaching royal shades, with an incredibly fine, tight webbing of inky blue-back matrix. Looking into it is like looking into other worlds, other planes — those of past and future as one, and neither; those of prophecy, and transcendence; those where the spirits dwell, and occasionally allow us a glimpse of what is possible.
These are the worlds of visions, of seeing beyond to what is possible and working to make it real — worlds of dreams in flower, before our very eyes.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
