Two hours past noon, and it’s finally warming up.
Late May, and it’s been unseasonably cold all month, but today’s fierce winds have seemed somehow especially bitter. Perhaps it’s the contrast with the brilliant sun and bright blue skies; perhaps it’s the buzzing of the hummingbirds, the songs of the larger birds, the spiraling beauty of the butterflies. But there is a feeling that our world sits at a tipping point, fragile spirits hovering, waiting for their chance at survival . . . and should the weights fall on the wrong side, it will not be only they who fail to thrive.
For now, the winds are driving in scattered clouds, too — enough to cast our small world into shadow and chill the air still further — but in those. momentary spaces of stillness between the protracted gusts, the sun’s warmth prevails.
And if the confidence of the small spirits, all hearts aflutter, is any indication, it will be enough: In recent days, we have had a new young black-headed grosbeak, here two months late; a female Bullock’s oriole, right on time; meadowlarks, at long last, close enough to hear if not to see; new hummingbirds and giant fall moths and native bees and, yes, the butterflies. These are migratory species, but for the summer season, they are home.
As the days wends its way toward fall of dark, and the rise of a nearly-full moon, I suspect that we shall see a sunset filled with fire against the gradient blues of impending night. Save for the hours of the storm, summer days rise and fall on butterfly wings, and we await the medicine of those gentler winds.
Today’s featured work, featured for the first time today and a masterwork by any measure, is manifest in the intense shades of the summer season and the gentle but powerful shapes of it, too. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
Hearts Aflutter Butterfly Necklace
Love is marked by hearts aflutter, by the feeling of magic in one’s spirit, borne on the soft and gentle wings of a butterfly. With this extraordinary necklace, Wings honors the medicine of love, the beauty of fire and sky, and the deceptive strength and resilience of these wingéd messenger spirits. The pendant, big and bold, is saw-cut entirely freehand, stamped on the front with a scattering of arcs and old-style sunrise motifs amid an array of tiny sacred hoops; on the reverse, with flowing-water motifs created by Wings’s own hand-made stamp, amid slightly larger hoops. The scalloped edges of the wings hold four distinct cabochons: on the upper wings, a pair of fiery Rosarita hearts, one minutely larger than the other, both the glossy pure crimson of gold slag; one the lower wings, a pair of matched natural turquoise ellipses, slightly freeform, in robin’s-egg blue marbled with delicate webbing of golden-bronze matrix. The turquoise is most likely from Nevada; it bears the colors of Number Eight, but the loosing webbing that characterizes Blue Moon. All four cabochons are set into bezels wrought entirely by hand, each segment saw-cut individually, filed smooth, and shaped gently around the stone. Antennae and body are all a single piece, formed of heavy-gauge sterling silver half-round wire, split at the top to form the antennae, the whole overlaid above the tail to provide added dimension and depth. The body is stamped in a repeating pattern of arcs, evoking the segmentation of the insect’s body; the antennae bear a repeat design of tiny medicine motifs. A simple starburst motif adorns the lightly flared slider-style bail, tucked below the antennae, while a sunrise marks the tail. The pendant hangs suspended from a spectacular strand of solid sterling silver round beads, punctuated on either side by four crackling fire agate orbs and sterling silver saucer-bead separators; further up each side of the strand, segments of high-grade natural American turquoise, likely Sleeping Beauty or Kingman, are manifest in bright blue orbs with golden matrix, alternating with the silver saucers, and, as anchors, a graduated segment of heishi-style disc beads of similarly high-grade turquoise at either end. Pendant is 3″ long by 3-3/8 across at the widest point; right heart cabochon is 1-1/8″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; left heart cabochon is 1″ long by 1″ across at the widest point; turquoise cabochons are 1-1/8″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point; bead strand is 22″ long (dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendant: Sterling silver; Rosarita [gold slag]; natural American turquoise [likely Nevada’s Blue Moon or Number Eight]
Beads: Solid sterling silver; fire agate; high-grade natural American turquoise [likely Sleeping Beauty and Kingman]
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
$2,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I love this shot of the reverse: a few scattered veins and spots, as would be the case in its real-life counterparts, coupled with the big, bold petal embossed on the back of the bail. it’s as though this delicate pollinator is perched on a silvery flower, doing the work of life itself.
But the cutwork is at least as impressive, and then, of course, there is all the freehand stampwork and bezel-work holding the stones on the front. And those stones are truly spectacular: twinned oblongs of phenomenal natural turquoise, in a perfect shade of sky blue finely veined with wisps of golden-hued matrix; and two extraordinary hearts of Rosarita, gold slag, in an usually intense, clear scarlet. [If you’re interested in the properties of Rosarita and the origins of the name, you can read about it in an old post, here.]
And, of course, the beads. Every bead on the strand was hand-selected specifically to pick up the colors in the cabochons and the glow of the surrounding silver.
The silver beads here are solid sterling: a mix of rounds and old-style saucer beads, all of them weighty and wonderful because of it. The turquoise beads, both the rounds and the heishi-style graduated discs, are high-grade natural American turquoise in that perfect desert sky blue that bespeaks Sleeping Beauty, the fairy-tale shades that hail from what is now known as Arizona. The reds are unusual, not coral or spiny oyster shell, not Rosarita [extremely difficult to find in bead form], but a material known as crackling fire agate. It manifests in shades from crimson to rust to orange to a deep apricot, and, indeed, the strand from which these came consisted of all of those colors. But the Rosarita cabochons were a crimson so deep and glossy as to be near scarlet, and these were chosen for the reds that were a match.
It’s a perfect capturing of the spirit of the summer season: of classic desert shades and the delicate beings that ride the warmer winds. We await the arrival of the latter, but the former are already here. Summer days rise and fall on butterfly wings, and those tiy messengers are already hard at their work.
~ 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.
