It’s morning; I’m watching the sky slowly lighten from black to gray and silver, hints of coral only just beginning to appear at the bases of long, trailing bands of remnant cloud.
It will be a good while yet before the sun gains the ridgeline; the dark is long and deep here at this time of year, and so is the cold. But once the sun climbs the sky, the earth will begin to warm far beyond what’s normal for this place. Even with the current bitter cold in the dark hours, daytime highs remain at least twenty degrees too high, and by week’s end, it’ll be thirty degrees too warm once again.
It seems an impossible task to make people understand the peril of a world that, within seven short years, has seen such drastic warming trends insinuate themselves int daily life here. They cannot rightly be called any kind of new “norm” — there is nothing “normal” about any of this — but they are digging in, supplanting historical patterns and cycles, and contributing daily to the disintegration occurring in real time around us.
Add to that the parade of horribles plaguing the world on seemingly every front now, and it’s hard not to feel despair.
But despair is not afforded us now, nor is apathy, and certainly nihilism is not granted to us as a legitimate option, either. Sadness is perfectly understandable; so is grief. But if this world is to survive, we cannot allow ourselves to be swamped by them. Wallowing prevents us from working, and this world needs our work now.
Even when it’s too warm — indeed, especially now — winter is a hard season here. It could hardly be otherwise at an elevation of nearly eight thousand feet, an area whose peaks rise an additional five thousand feet higher and more, an alpine environment that is simultaneously a desert. It’s a place of harsh extremes, and we have always known that we needed to be prepared for any eventuality here. Far too many of those have already come to pass in this wounded world of ours, but at this season, we at least have a certain degree of seasonal chill, if not the average temperatures or the snow to go with it. It’s a cold medicine for land and waters, pun not intended but remarkably apr all the same: It’s the time of year when the earth rests, and [if we are lucky, although such fortune has no been conferred on us lately], when the waters regenerate and rejuvenate, reborn by the accumulated snowpack that will send them flowing overland and downriver in the spring, warmed by the growing light and in turn renewing a growing earth.
This week’s #TBT featured work seems to me to embody all of these gifts in beautifully compact and wearable form. It’s a throwback only to some three and a half months ago, to a special commission by a dear friend that was completed near August’s end. It’s one of five hair cuffs that Wings was asked to create in a group [and you can see the group, shot together in a single photo, near the end of this post]. This one was stamped and scored freehand in an old-style radiant pattern, and set with a small but powerful stone that looked like a map of our world.
This particular version came about after our friend has asked me to keep an eye out for unusual stones in Wings’s inventory in her favorite colors and materials. She’s particularly fond of blues, with the overlap that that implies with green on one side and purple on the other; she also has works by him in black and white and rich dark reds and plain silver, too. In this instance, I trawled through his entire inventory, setting a side a small but sizeable collection of unique cabochons on the appropriate colors and the right sizes and shapes to be suitable for use in hair cuffs. Ultimately, she chose Koroit opal, Royal Web variscite, denim lapis, royal lapis, and this one: azurite in malachite, but in all honesty, more accurately described as malachite in azurite, since the rich royal blue predominates.
And a hair cuff is, in a way, exactly what it sounds like: a cuff to go around one’s hair. That’s vastly oversimplifying it, of course; in truth, it’s a rectangle adorned as the creative spirit dictates, then hammered gently into a sharp arc like the one shown here. The stampwork comes first; the stonework comes last.
And in between, it’s the inside detail, which includes what holds it in place.
Hair cuff are design to go around a braid or a sizeable lock of hair, the convex outer surface displayed at the front. But it’s what’s inside that keeps it there.
Once the stampwork is complete and the cuff is hammered into the perfect arc, Wings turns it over so that the inside of the arc is facing up. He then cuts a length of silver — usually of a slender gauge of sterling silver “wire.” which is perfect for this purpose. In this instance, he chose what’s known as pattern wire, commercially produced by melting ingot and pouring it into exceedingly long industrial-sized molds that have been formed into various patterns, then letting it cool and releasing it from the molds; it can then be cut to length for purchase, usually in feet. This particular design is one that always calls to. mid the dot/dash pattern of Morse code, with the concave ellipses alternating with segments in a repeating pattern of deeply scored diagonal lines. it’s infused with a subtle Art Deco sensibility, making it perfect for the outer design of this piece.
Whatever form this wire takes in creating the pick, Wings cuts it to length, generally roughly the same length as the cuff, perhaps a fraction longer. He then bends one end of it backward, forming a sharp arc perhaps an eighth to three-sixteenths of an inch long. This he shapes so that it lies flat, the rest of the pick is raised slightly from the portion that is turned over. That short portion will be soldered securely near the top of the inside at the very center of the arc. First, though, he files the other end to a smooth, sharp point and bends it downward so that, when soldered at the top, this end will be touching the inner band. This provides the tension that will keep it in place on the hair; a ponytail holder is wrapped around it, and then around the braid or lock, and the outer arc positioned on top of the hair, showing outward.
Only after the inside is complete does any bezel get created and any stone set. The stampwork, of course, comes first — in this instance, a beautiful and eminently traditional sunburst motif, deep, even rays scored freehand and emanating from the center, each pair ending ina stylized sunrise-like radiant arc, this one with its own geometric detail that infuses the design with an Indigenous Art Deco spirit.
After shaping and the soldering of the pick, Wings turned it face up once more, fashioning a simple round bezel to hold the stone. This particular cabochon was an old one, a specimen that had been his collection for decades, of unknown origin and while small, uncalibrated. It was also remarkable for its color and patterning: Most azurite in malachite is majority green, the latter being the dominant mineral, and whatever blue is present very often tends toward deep turquoise shades. In this specimen, the blue was dominant, and it was a clear, bright, opaque, perfectly even royal blue, almost electric in its color, with map-like patches of emerald green that made it resemble an aerial view of our land mass, green lands in blue waters.
And as you can see, in both substance and spirit it was of a piece with the other four cuffs in this collection in miniature, created contemporaneously: each with its own distinctive spirit and identity, each with its own unique stampwork and stone, but still somehow all seeming related to each other.
In that, perhaps, they’re not so unlike the earth from which stones and silver were drawn, nor the way we should inhabit it, recognizing the fully actualized spirits of our nonhuman relatives as well as those like us.
If we managed that, our planet would be in much healthier shape now, with far fewer threats in the political and societal spheres.
This season would be the perfect time to recommit to such an approach, of course. It’s a season of rest, or at least it should be, for the planet that sustains us; one f rest, too, or at least t should be, for us, as the days grow ever shorter and the nights long, the darkness icy and deep. This season fulfills its role as a cold medicine for land and waters, and if it is no longer as cold as it should be, if the snow no longer falls as it should, at least we can provide earth and sky, air and water, and all with whom we share it a little healing rest and respite now.
~ 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.
