For the first time in days, we have what could reasonably be called real sun.
Oh, it’s been sunny intermittently this week, but always bookending a lengthy storm, and then vanishing once more behind the clouds of an early dark. The clouds are building today, too, and there is a decent chance that we shall see more rain before the day is out, but for the moment, it looks and feels a bit more like early October here.
And there is much to do, as we dodge the next torrential rain or early snow: The latter has already fallen on the tops of the peaks here, blanketing the tundra between stands of evergreen and craggy outcrops. At this season, we know better than to take weather or forecast for granted, and we are setting about our work now with an eye firmly fixed on a cloud-webbed autumn light.
It’s a spectacularly beautiful time of year, though, and even without the usual crystalline clarity of the air that attends autumn in this place, the sun manages a light show for us every day.
The nature of the light now reminded me of this week’s #TBT work, one that dates back just over four years ago now, to September of 2018. It’s a baby bracelet, a popular item here. Wings doesn’t make them often, though; most inquiries for such items come from folks expecting genuine high-grade materials at plastic prices. And so on the rare occasions that Wings creates one — they are, in fact, perfect uses of lengths of leftover silver too small for an adult wrist — they frequently wind up being gifts for the new arrivals in our circles and communities. This one, as it happens, is worn by one of our granddaughters.
And it’s a perfect adornment for her, too. The band is just wide enough not to risk falling off or cutting into the delicate skin of her wrist, edges rounded smoothly and the ends filed smooth, as well. It’s formed of sterling silver pattern wire in a wonderful Art Nouveau-style motif worthy of Mucha himself, all flowering petals seeming to blow in a gentle breeze, with graceful leaves flowing down its length. The molded pattern stands out in sharply textured relief, and the silver itself is polished to a shine just a fraction brighter the Florentine, which gives the recessed areas between the molded flowers a lovely aged look.
But the detail that makes this piece is the stone.
And it is a stone, for all that it looks like amber: gemmy but resiny, full of inclusions and with a warm and subtle glow.
It’s citrine.
Yes, I know; it doesn’t look much like most citrine, which tends to be a very translucent pale gold. This stone? It’s translucent, but not flawlessly so; you can see into its depths, but in there you find complexity.
And that’s the difference, very often, between natural stones and treated ones: Unless you’re paying top dollar for flawlessly clear natural citrine, you’re likely getting the heat-treated variety. It’s still citrine, but it’s not in its original state. Then again, cut and cabbed and polished is not its “original state,” either: As always, I find it doesn’t do to be too snobbish (never mind hypocritical) over materials, because people should be should be permitted to like what they like, as well as what they can afford, and if everyone knows what they’re getting, no one should be criticizing anything as somehow “inferior.”
Another aspect of the dealer’s market that always rather amazes me is that, for all the talk of “natural,” “authentic” stones, that same market pushes an aesthetic that is impossible to meet naturally, unless, as I say, you can afford to pay accordingly. The same people who scorn modest clear citrine cabs will equally scorn the natural ones that are not flawless, never mind that they hold more variation and character and plain old mystery than the barely-tinted material. Some call it “smoky” citrine; some confuse it entirely with smoky quartz, advertising the latter as citrine when it’s not. Others called it “rutilated quartz,” and that’s not accurate, either. But in this instance? It’s simply a beautiful, complex, heavily included gem with a stippled and hazy aspect to its translucence.
Much like, in fact, a cloud-webbed autumn light.
The thing about baby bracelets, of course, is that they are designed for babies, or at least for toddlers, and our granddaughter will be outgrowing hers soon (if she hasn’t already). But it will be a gift, one of the outside world’s much-vaunted “natural” stone and silver, that she can pass on to her own children, if she so desires, or to the child of another relative or friend. The materials will last, and the workmanship, too, and it will bless its future wearers with the same magic and mystery of this seasons’s light.
~ Aji
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