This is the season of sunrise in flame.
It’s my favorite time of year, and I do my best to be up early to witness this phenomenon that is confined almost exclusively to autumn, and beyond that, mostly only to October.
It occurs courtesy of specific weather patterns that, at least in an ordinary year, deliver faultlessly clear cold skies at night, with trailing bands of clouds gathering at the horizon and behind the peaks in the hours just before dawn. At the point at which the rising sun gains the ridgeline, its rays must make their way through the veils, delivering to us here below a first light of flame, from silver and gold to amber and peach, from coral and copper to crimson and scarlet.
It’s a spectrum reflected, in part, on the land now, if only in small and intermittent spaces like our own. This region’s autumn foliage tends more toward the gold and burnt orange and brown of turned quaking aspens and cottonwoods, but there are a few reds to be found. Both aspen and cottonwood leaves sometimes manifest in threads of crimson before turning over to coppery, rusty shades. There are always the stands of gambel oak and its relatives, and the fiery vines known as woodbine. And while outsiders tend to assert that maples are not indigenous to this part of our land mass, they are in fact mistaken: Maples are native to these lands, too, if only in small numbers and typically found only in very specific climates in alpine ranges, those that receive enough water year-round to keep them thriving. And then, of course, there are the red willows that have so long lent their name to people and place, their crimson stalks glowing like independent flames in the light once their leaves have been shed for another season.
Here on our small space of local earth, we are blessed to have more reds than most now. Some of it is found in the stands of red willow that have managed to survive this deadly drought. Some is in the woodbine that trails over old sections of fencing like garlands and lights on a Christmas tree. And some of it is found in our own two maples, trees that Wings planted specifically so that we would have something indigenous to both our homelands, a spirit full of radiant fire in fall and the sweetest of sap in the spring.
Today’s featured work is manifest in the shades of these leaves in the colors of flame, but more than that, it seems to embody the crimson glow of the October sunrise, too. As #TBT features go, it’s one of Wings’s older works, dating back somewhere between 2006 and 2008 (2006 being the first year that we really began tracking his body of work photographically on a regular basis). It was part of his informal and intermittent series of layered-bezel works from that period, mostly necklaces but a few rings and pairs of earrings, too. This one was almost astonishingly simple in its design, and yet animated by the powerful spirits of fire and light.
This necklace began with a simple circle, what looks at first glance like a pre-cut medallion but was in fact cut freehand. If you scroll up and look at the silver just to the left of the bail, you’ll see that it’s slightly irregular, and creates a also-slightly-imperfect circle. Pre-cut medallions are punched out mechanically, en masse, and show all the flawless and sterile geometry of something machine-made.
I don’t know, at this remove, whether Wings’ had already chosen the stone before he began, or instead had simple cut out the backing with an overall design in mind but no details as to gem substance or shape or shade. Whichever approach he took, he ultimately settled on the cabochon you see here, a moderately-sized but bold oval of Rosarita. I’ve written at length here about Rosarita, and I’m not going to reprise it all here today except to say, for those who don’t know what it is, is that it’s a specific form of gold slag, a product of the refining process (and so it is, in a sense, a natural material, but it is not precisely a “stone”). You can read about it in detail here.
At any rate, once Wings had chosen the Rosarita cabochon, he fashioned a plain oval bezel to hold it, then soldered it securely to the round backing. He placed the oval on the horizontal, aligning one side with the curving bottom edge of the circle. It produced an effect much like a rising (or setting) sun, the orb’s irregular heart near the horizon while the rays arced upward and outward at top and sides. He then cut a single small, slender piece of silver, wider at the center and tapering to narrow ends, to serve as the bail. He kept it, and the setting, both entirely free of stampwork, preferring n this case to let the “stone” and silver speak. He gently shaped the bail from the center, first rounding it into a loop, then soldering both ends securely together atop the middle of the silver setting’s upper arc.
All that remained now was the detail work. He oxidized the setting where bezel met backing, and buffed it to an antiqued Florentine finish, then set the “stone.” Lastly, he threaded it with sterling silver snake chain, each end anchored with sterling silver findings, blessed it traditionally, and put it on offer in inventory. It sold somewhere in the neighborhood of 2008 or 2009, some 12 or 13 years ago.
It’s hard to find Rosarita these days, particularly of this quality. Much of what’s on offer now is more glass-like, less substantial and with far less opacity. The lot of cabochons of which this one was a part is a parcel he acquired years ago; all of them are gone now, used in a wide array of works, all of which have long since sold. He may have one or two newer cabochons left, and he’s hopeful of acquiring more, but it’s a costly endeavor these days. there’s no longer any guarantee what the cabs will look like, in terms of either color or opacity.
But we are entering the season when this substance shines: a fire in the cold; a first light of flame. It’s a time for the reds to show their colors and set our small world ablaze.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
