The clouds are here in layers this morning, pleated like chiffon, a dusky blue veil before the face of the rising sun. Rain is supposed to arrive later, but for now, a mix of wan light and shadow washes over the flowering green earth.
Our unseasonal weather here has brought us an unusual mix of blues and greens, electric at dawn and dusk, muted in between. The persistent chill has prevented planting thus far, but the rain has done wonders for a land that last year was given over entirely to the dusty brown of deep drought.
The cold has kept the wildflowers in abeyance, but our world here is still a lush flowering green.
The current colors of our world reminded me of a throwback work from about a dozen years ago, one that sold, if memory serves, in 2008. It was one in Wings’s cactus blossom series, an informal collection of rings and earrings wrought in a very old traditional style. It’s a style that lends itself to virtually any type of stone or combination thereof, cut and cabbed into the proper size and shape. But this particular piece was built around a small collection of truly spectacular stones, ones of ethereal, mystical, changeable color and beauty.
And in this case, the design would have begun with the stones. When creating a blossom piece (what the non-Native market in Native jewelry refers to as a “cluster” pattern, but which is actually and so clearly a blossom design), the setting will depend entirely on the sizes, shapes, and number of the stones to be used. In this case, Wings chose a matched collection, one that he acquired, I believe, between twelve and fifteen years ago or so, although from where is long since lost to memory and time.
And we could not decide what the stones were.
In working with them, Wings called them “jade,” as a convenient catch-all term; it’s hard to talk about a work in progress without specifying the stones. And, indeed, in certain lights, they very much resembled jade: opaque here, translucent there, deep in the centers with shimmering olive-green light around the edges.
The shades at the center, though, were more the teal blue found in certain fine specimens of bloodstone, as though the stones were infused with actual indigo. For a time, we thought they might be blue fluorite; the color certainly matched the more intense shades of that stone. But at the center they seemed mostly opaque, not a characteristic of fluorite, and it’s vanishingly rare anyway for fluorite to remain unbanded by clear matrix in such large specimens.
We finally came up with a couple of likely possibilities, one perhaps moreso than the other: blue tourmaline; or blue jade.
Both are spectacular stones, both manifest in both common and rare variants, and both, despite their labels, are as dependent upon green as blue for producing their unique color. Blue tourmaline is a mostly clear, translucent stone that appears in a range of colors from pale aquamarine-like shades to the deep, intense teal blue of the center stone shown above. Cabochons range from perfectly clear to mottled slightly with tiny inclusions mostly in like colors, usually forms of rutile. The darker, more intense colors are the more valuable, and the most expensive of all is one called Paraiba blue tourmaline, one variant of a form of tourmaline classified as indicolite, and one that is found only in a particular area of Brazil, and manifest in what some gemologists and mineralogists describe as “neon” blue[-green]. A true Paraiba blue tourmaline cabochon will set the buyer back hundreds, even thousands of dollars for a single stone. Lesser grades, depending upon all sorts of gemological factors, including color and clarity, can range from a few dollars per cabochon to a few hundred. It’s possible to find mid-grade versions in deep, intense teal shades at a moderate price.
Blue jade, however, is another stone altogether. There are two common forms of jade: nephrite, which is most of the classic green material on the market today; and jadeite, which is a harder stone, and a more valuable one, manifest in greens but also in unusual shades. Jade actually comes in greens, blues, reds, blacks, and a few other hues, as well, and is found in many places around the world, but blue jadeite of the classic top quality usually sources to Guatemala. And blue jadeite manifests in a full spectrum of blues with an underlying hint of green, and an equally broad range of matrix patterns (or general lack thereof) and levels of opacity.
That said, the intense shades of jadeite are most commonly found in the the expensive specimens from Guatemala, and while they have some translucence, especially around the edges, they tend toward a mottled, marbled opacity. Blue tourmaline, on the other hand, is possible to find in such sizes with a depth of mostly-translucent blue-green color similar to those in the stones shown in the ring above (and at a reasonable cost), and leading us finally, leaving a bit of mental wiggle room, to have settled on blue tourmaline for purposes of labeling these stones.
But back to the blossom design. Wings uses a couple of general mental templates in working in this style. The classic blossom requires an odd number of stones: one somewhat larger cabochon, which may be round, oval, or occasionally, a teardrop, placed at the center, with an even number of cabochons, either all identical or of two even-divided sizes and shapes, arrayed around it as petals. In one memorable instance, he jettisoned this standard for what would become a truly remarkable blossom ring, one with three larger stones arrayed on the center vertical in what would assume a figurative form, like a spirit being. Generally speaking, though, he creates the flower with a round or oval center cabochon, with either all round, all oval, or a mix of round and oval smaller cabs set at the four cardinal and four ordinal points.
Such was the case with this collection of stones: a large, mostly opaque oval set at the center of the flower, four medium-sized round cabochons, in a mix of opacity and translucence, set to the cardinal directions, and four smaller ovals set to the ordinal points, arrayed outward like petals opening to the sun. And once Wings had settled on their pattern and placement, it was time to create the setting.
Blossom designs consist of a specific grouping of bezels set onto a common backing, one that is sculpted, for lack of a better word, around the edges so that just enough of it extends to support each bezel to its own edge, without stretching beyond it. If you look closely at the image above, you’ll see the scalloped effect of the backing’s edges; it makes for a minimalist setting that allows the beauty of the stones and the essential flowering design to shine through, uncluttered by extraneous silver.
Wings creates such settings freehand, arraying the stones around each in proper position on the silver and sketching its outer edges beneath and between the stones. These he cuts from a fairly substantial gauge of silver; it must be heavy and solid enough to support the weight of anywhere from nine to thirteen cabochons, depending on the overall design, without bending. Once the scalloped base was cut, he filed the edges smooth and soldered it to the band. The band is not visible in these photos, but if memory serves, it was a fairly wide band, one with a bit of stampwork around its length; such designs generally require a more substantial band to support the size and weight of the top setting and stones.
Once the backing for the setting was in place, it was time to create the bezels. These cabochons were all relatively highly domed, which can sometimes be a problem with plain bezels; they often have a fairly low profile, which doesn’t always grip the stone as securely. Wings chose to create saw-toothed bezels for each of these, which had the added advantage of evoking a flowery feel that made the stones pop in a way especially well-suited to the overall the blossom design. These had to be soldered carefully into place, using the extended edges of the backing as a guide, so that nothing extended beyond the “point” of each petal, even as each bezel was cleanly aligned with all the others. Once this long process was complete, Wings oxidized the setting thoroughly, and buffed the bezels and band to a medium-high polish.
Lastly, it was time to set the stones. The advantage of saw-toothed bezels (sometimes called “serrated” bezels) is that the teeth can be bent gently inward to grip the sides of the stones, providing an extra layer of security without distorting the overall shape of the bezel. Once complete, the ring evoked an almost mystical feel, an ethereal blossom opening its petals to the light of other worlds — and of this one, a flowering green in the blue.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
