I arose before dawn, sky blue-black and spangled with stars. The forecast finally fulfilled itself last night, leaving a late light dusting of snow upon the earth, but by the indigo hours, all the clouds save a few trailing bands to the east had already moved out beyond the mountains.
It was a moment of pure winter, clear and hard-edged, with more ice scattered across the darkened sky than upon a newly-covered land.
The sun is up now, just, and the day will be hard-edged indeed. A fierce wind blows furiously from the north already, and the wan light holds out little hope of warmth. But in this place, even in such dangerously cold weather, there germinates the promise of life renewed and a world reborn.
We are soon to be visited by manifestations of a number of celestial spirits: meteor showers and a comet to add to the eternal dance of moon and stars across that arcing bridge we now call the Milky Way. Such phenomena are traditionally regarded as signs, omens, events to be respected and not treated casually. Their appearance reminds me that we live in a creative cosmos, one that continually rebirths and renews itself and the world around us, even as it rests in the long low sleep of dormancy.
It called to mind one of Wings’s masterworks, a piece commissioned a little more than two years ago by one of the people dearest to us: a specially-designed concha belt given thee simple yet expansive title Galaxy.
Our friend put almost no conditions on its design; she was not particularly concerned with whether it contained many, or indeed any, stones. She wanted one conceived with her in mind, one that honored certain celestial imagery found in her own tradition, and one that she could wear for the many special events that she has occasion to attend — and she wanted it to be full of Wings’s stampwork. Beyond that, she simply wanted it to be comfortable (which is not always the case with such belts, particularly the larger designs).
I spoke with her at some length about what she regarded as the essential elements, then relayed the entire conversation to Wings in another lengthy discussion. He spent a short time contemplated the form and shape it should take, then got down to work.
He settled on its broad outlines almost immediately: It would be a work in the tradition of old-style “coin belts,” in which the conchas were made out of silver coins, rolled and hammered into thin, smooth ovals and strung on a strand of leather. Coin belts possess the virtue of a low profile, easily strung through belt loops, and much more comfortable when fastened around the waist of a dress; the long, narrow conchas don’t bite into ribs or hips, particularly when the wearer is seated, in the way that the larger versions tend to do. But conchas made from rolled coins also present a very small canvas for the artistry of stampwork, and so Wings determined that this belt should traverse a middle ground, summoned into existence via sterling silver ovals no more than two inches in length, and about an inch and a half across at the widest point. He created, if memory serves, sixteen separate conchas, plus a seventeenth, somewhat larger but identical in shape and proportion, to form the buckle. After cutting each oval, he filed the edges smooth.
Then he sketched, freehand, a stylized representation of a Morning Star to use as a template. He laid out sixteen separate stars, cutting each (again, freehand) out of lightweight sterling silver. Each star possessed the traditional four spokes extending to the Four Sacred Direction, but in this instance, he flared each spoke and cut each end into a half-diamond shape that evoked the feel of a traditional Eye of Spirit. He then stamped a tiny sacred hoop design at the center of each of the sixteen stars.
Next, he cut a final freehand image, the seventeenth one: a crescent moon. This he stamped in a repeating pattern of three five-pointed stars arcing down its length. He filed the edges of the moon and stars to a smooth finish.
He then set stars and moon aside; they would come into play later. Now, it was time to turn to the stampwork our friend wanted to be the focus of her belt.
We had talked about the design repeatedly and at some length. We both believe in the guiding power of cosmic forces, of the role of serendipity and synchronicity in the creative process of both human endeavor and life itself. Wings concluded that, for an design such as this, it would be folly to attempt to force the pattern into a repetitive, uniform arrangement of images. Instead, he decided to evoke the apparent randomness of the deep sky itself — not random at all, of course, by the universe’s reckoning, but an arrangement of stars and celestial spheres that seems so to our more limited human perception.
And so, he chose four stamps (fitting, perhaps, to sit beneath a Morning Star whose four spokes extend to the Four Sacred Directions): a five-pointed star; a crescent moon; a round sphere; and a flowering nova-like image. These he arrayed in random patterns across the sixteen conchas, creating a galaxy-like image — a starscape in miniature, ever-shifting, ever-changing with each successive concha, to symbolize the shifting of the constellations and other sky spirits as our own position changes with the movement of the earth. He repeated this randomized pattern across the face of the larger seventeenth concha. He then turned each one over and set it into a small concave anvil, hammering it gently from the reverse side to dome it lightly, repoussé-fashion. Doming the conchas permits the proper attaching of the loops on the reverse, so that they can be strung securely on the belt, and also makes for a more comfortable fit. He then soldered the loops into place, a single long slender band of silver stretching from the top to the bottom at the center of each concha, save on the larger buckle; on the buckle, the loop was extended slightly and placed at one end, with a post at the other, curved slightly, to fit through the holes that would ultimately be punched in the leather of the belt itself.
Now, its was time for the next stage: overlay work. Wings turned each of the seventeen pieces face up again, and took each of the smaller conchas in turn, one at a time. Holding the first one securely on the workspace of his soldering station, he took one of the Morning Stars and placed it carefully in thee exact center of the piece. Once its position was set, he soldered it securely into place; once set, he moved to the next, repeating the process sixteen fifteen times.
Then he moved to the buckle.
Our friend had specified no particular preference for stones, but we both knew of her fondness for turquoise in rich green hues. Accordingly, Wings chose a small round cabochon of what, if memory serves, was Stone Mountain turquoise — from a mine in Nevada known for producing glossy green stone in shades of emerald webbed with patchy pale yellow matrix. It looked like a green world, perfect to set in the embrace of the moon against a backdrop of stars. And so he positioned the moon in the center of the buckle, then fashioned a small round sawtoothed bezel next to it, centered in the concavity of the crescent moon’s inner arc. He soldered the bezel into place, then repeated the process with the moon. He then oxidized all of the stampwork on all seventeen pieces, and all of the joins of the overlays and the bezel on the buckle, and buffed them all to a velvety Florentine finish, the soft gentle glow of distant starshine. He then set the cabochon into thee bezel.
At long last, it was time to create the belt itself. Wings chose a length of sturdy, heavy-weight smooth black leather and cut it freehand, then beveled the edges for both aesthetics and proper fit. He then returned to the stamps that he had used on the conchas, selecting the five-pointed star; he stamped this in a random repeating pattern down the entire length of the belt. He then punched a pair of holes near one end and fed a single long, hand-beveled hand-made lace through them from the front, looping the ends over the top and bringing them between the lace and the belt to hang downward in the traditional fashion. He then strung all sixteen conchas along the length of the belt, separating them at equidistant lengths from each other. Lastly, he attached the buckle to the near end of the belt, and punched a series of equidistant holes in the opposite end to be fed through the buckle when the belt was fastened.
The belt complete, all the remained was to bless it and send it on its way.
This was, to my mind, one of Wings’s most powerful works, one that summoned the spirits of the skies to fashion a galaxy in miniature, a creative cosmos formed of the dust of life itself.
It was present outside the window again this morning, in the indigo hours before the dawn, conceiving and birthing new worlds in their track across the sky . . . and renewing our own for yet another day.
~ Aji
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