Today dawned almost perfectly clear, skies a bright solid turquoise expanse, with only the faintest hint of cloud to mar the surface; the air is warm and almost perfectly still.
Today is all spring.
Tomorrow, winter returns.
For this day, though, we are grateful for the unseasonal weather, having had to be out in the world early this morning. It made for easier errands, especially in a time when we are still forced to consolidate them into one trip as much as possible in avoid to avoid unnecessary exposure. It’s about to get much worse, given that the state has made the unforgiveable decision to end visitor quarantine effective immediately, and to return most counties, at a lower capacity, to sit-down dining, indoors and unmasked. It’s not the we engage in such deadly dangerous behaviors ourselves; it’s that an already-noncompliant populace will put us all at further risk now.
We have no need to go anywhere beyond what is absolutely necessary, no need to “get away.” This small square of land is a refuge, a place at this time of year of sundogs illuminating turquoise skies, of rich red-gold earth beneath the light of winter storms, of visitations by the elk and the golden eagles, too: a world built of the love of the spirits.
This week’s featured throwback work is a manifestation of this great collection of gifts, of earth and sky and storm and light all bound up in the form and shape of love itself. This pair was, if memory serves, perhaps the first of a small informal series of such works, mostly wrought in various shades and patterns pf turquoise, but at least one in the fiery red of spiny oyster shell. This pair was perhaps the most striking of the former, created using heart-shaped focal cabochons of what I believe was Royston turquoise, classic robin’s-egg blue speckled and marbled with the red-gold shades of a copper matrix. The first of the series was called “RainHeart,” and each successive iteration held true to the original spirit, if with slight variances in stone and silverwork.
And this pair was spectacularly simple, built entirely around those heart-shaped cabochons, thick but with virtually no doming of the surface, and with clear, deep throats at the top of each. These were cut and cabbed from stone that derived from the same deposit, but each held its own unique matrixing patterns, both classic specimens found at Royston — one lightly speckled throughout, the traceries forming a delicate golden webbing, the other featuring bold patches and red-gold marbling that seemed to float across the surface of the stone.
The stones were in fact so beautiful that wings elected to keep the earring designs as spare as possible. In this instance, that meant turning them into simple stud earrings, a style Wings almost never creates. But these small hearts needed precious little extra adornment, and so the creative process was built entirely around them.
He began by creating backings for each bezel, heart-shaped pieces of sheet silver measured to extend only a hair’s-width beyond the edges of the stones save at the top. At the top of each, in the center of the throat of the heart, he extended the silver organically into the better part of a circle; he then cut the entire pieces, with the circle attached, entirely freehand. He punched a hole into each circle, then cut it evenly and filed it smooth, creating a tiny loop.
Next he formed simple bezels atop the outer edge of each (save for the loop at the top): scalloped sterling silver, high enough to hold each cabochon securely without covering its edges. He then fashioned a tiny round saw-toothed bezel at the base of each loop.
Note my phrasing there. It’ll be important later on.
Once the bezels were complete, he soldered posts onto the reverse, then oxidized the joins and buffed them in the tumbler, which provides a velvety, glowing finish for small pieces. All that remained were to set the stones.
Now, look for a moment at the small round accent cabochons: You’ll see that they don’t cover the open space of the loop completely; there’s a tiny arc of open space above each stone. Looks like a mistake, right?
It’s not.
Wings explicitly created these with the open crescent at the top of each tab ring . . . so that if the wearer ultimately preferred to turn them into dangles, instead of studs, a jump ring holding an earring wire could be threaded through it.
Which, in point of fact, is exactly how I would have worn them, but these we sold to a client probably twelve years or so ago.
Still, they remain my favorite among the turquoise versions of this style, small tokens of abundance, of the medicine where earth meets sky. It’s also a pair that suits our current weather and season perfectly, a world built of the love of the spirits, in the shape of the earth’s own heart.
~ Aji
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