Two days of extreme weather, delivering an abundance of rain, and today dawned clear and bright. It’s been a perfect fall day: warm, yet cool enough for comfort, the wind leading with a scalpel’s edge; more leaves newly turned and fire just beginning to dot the foliage from peaks to earth below.
We say that autumn is our most perfect season here, and mostly when we do, we’re referring to the daylight hours, because this is what it produces.
But we cannot forget the beauty and medicine that comes to us on fall nights.
Last night, of course, gave us the rise of the first full moon of the harvest season, and despite lingering cloud cover, we were fortunate enough to be able to see it. The presence of those clouds surrounding its ascent gave us iridescence, corona, reflection, afterglow . . . all the aspects of moonlight that we don’t see in a perfectly clear sky.
But those few moments when what my people call the Leaves Turning Moon first gained the ridgeline were bookended by other beauty, as well: before, that of a storm-webbed twilight, complete with double rainbow of electric intensity; after, the kind of clarity that permits one to see stars whose existence we have long forgotten, if indeed we ever knew of it.
And these are distinctly the gifts of fall in this place, a result of that extraordinary autumnal atmospheric clarity that burns lungs and steals breath the first few times one is out in its chill, and of that rarer event, the autumn storm, with clouds and fog and occasional lighting and a full spectrum of color attending the sun’s last-minute return before night.
Today’s featured masterwork — Wings’s newest, completed only this afternoon — embodies this gifts of season and time, the extraordinary twilight beauty and medicine for the spirit that the cosmos delivers to us as the night falls. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
As the Night Falls Necklace
As the night falls, the world embraces us in the cosmic beauty of twilight. With this necklace, Wings evokes the reds and purples of sunset against the silvered black of impending night, of the flowering of moon- and starlight in a cloud-bejeweled sky. The pendant is built around an extraordinary teadrop-shaped focal stone, one that we believe to be dendritic red flower jasper with purple and black jaspers included into it, perhaps faint traces of pale quartz and hematite woven throughout. it’s set into a simple scalloped bezel on an extended backing, one scalloped by freehand saw-work to evokes the petals within the stone and of twilight’s flowering glow. The flange is stamped freehand using a single tiny divot-end stamp, scores, perhaps hundreds of strikes of the jeweler’s hammer texturizing it with a richly aged look. Each petal-like scalloped edge arcs around a tiny round cabochon, twelve of them in all: six fiery carnelian rounds glowing from within, six cool metallic hematite in full shimmer, all highly domed and all set into saw-toothed bezels. The pendant hangs from a hand-made sterling silver bezel curved backward, slider-style; it’s stamped freehand, end to end and edge to edge, in paired Art Deco petals of light and textured lodge motifs. The whole hangs from a strand of equally phenomenal beads, each hand-selected specifically for this work: rounds of deep purple amethyst, shimmering ruby, black onyx, and marbled lepidolite, separated by smooth rondels of hematite and old red glass and faceted rondels of natural ruby. Along the sides, bold barrels of sunset jasper in marbled rose and wine and plum frame very old large rounds of natural hematite, one per side. The anchor segments consist of tiny faceted black glass beads around amethyst orbs and single onyx bugle beads. Pendant with bail hangs 2-3/4″ long; excluding bail, 2-1/2″ long by 2″ across at the widest point; bail itself is a total of 3/4″ long by 7/16″ wide; the focal cabochon is 1-3/4″ long by 1-3/8″ across at the widest point; small accent cabochons are 3/16″ each; bead strand is roughly 22″ long [all dimensions approximate]. Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendant: Sterling silver; likely melding of red flower and purple jaspers; carnelian; hematite
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
Beads: Amethyst; hematite; old red glass; ruby; lepidolite; sunset jasper;
OLD natural hematite; onyx; old black glass
$1,800 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The pendant is an extraordinary specimen of freehand silversmithing, the saw-work and stampwork all done individually, a perfect frame for the focal. That stampwork is so deep that you can see the displacement of the silver on the reverse . . . and it really does seem to create a frame for what lies at its center, simple, elegant, and beautifully suited in size and shape.
The bail is also wrought by hand, saw-cut of sterling silver, stamped in an Art Deco repeating pattern of paired geometric petals, each pair edged between them by simple lodge symbols. It’s created in a slider style, shaped by hand to loop over the beads on the back, permitting the pendant to lie properly when worn.
And then there are the stones, and the beads.
The focal is a giant teardrop of what we reliably believe to be dendritic red flower jasper, included with shades of purple and black: likely other jaspers, with faint hints of pale quartz and hematite woven throughout the stone. We have no provenance on the stone; he acquired it some fourteen or so years ago, and if memory serves, it shipped with an incorrect label misidentifying if as either jade or serpentine. It’s obviously neither, but exactly what it is remains something of an open question.
The stippled material throughout the stone, in shades of dusty rose, dusty lilac, and dendritic its of black, all speak red flower jasper’s pattern; texture and finish also seem all jasper, solid but never, and susceptible to a high, smooth polish. The black inclusions at the side and throughout hint at more jasper inclusions, as well as the possibility of an oxide such as hematite, as do the slightly shimmery grays amid the tiny dots of pale quartz. Here, Wings has ringed it with tiny round jewels, carnelian to pick up the scarlet in the stone, and hematite to catch the metals that likely infuse it.
The beads were all hand-selected specifically for this work, to match the many shades of purple, red, and black within the focal cabochon, as well as the crimson and silvery-gray that surrounds it. At center, to fit the bail properly, is a segment of four small round spheres of translucent purple amethyst, each separated by a tiny hematite rondel. Moving upward, it’s a gradient of orbs and rondels: natural ruby and onyx alternating with old red glass rondels, giant lepidolite rounds in marbled shades of dusty lilac, like the purple in the focal stone, paired with bold faceted barrels of sunset jasper in shades of mulberry and rose, and on either side, a single pop of silvery shimmer via two giant orbs of extremely old natural hematite, the last two in his inventory of beads. Moving upward, onyx and ruby rounds alternate with rondels of brighter faceted natural ruby and smooth hematite, the anchor segment of more amethyst orbs alternating with old faceted black glass, a single black onyx bugle at the center of each group.
Together, they pick up all the shades and shapes and textured of the pendant’s stones, and do so in an arrangement that permits the whole necklace to hang properly. It’s an arrangement that is spectacularly beautiful, and wonderfully seasonal, too, an echo of last night’s moonrise to meet this evening’s flawless twilight clarity. As the night falls, our world delivers medicine for the spirit . . . and it’s often of a kind that is available to us only on fall nights.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
