On #ThrowbackThursdays, I usually use this space to feature Wings’s past works that fall into the category of “big and bold”: collector’s works of a size and style that make an extraordinary statement. As a practical matter, that usually means large items: necklaces; bracelets; belts and buckles; occasionally a piece from the “Collectibles” category.
But “big and bold” is relative, especially as it relates to Native jewelry. Sometimes, what is physically a very small piece can be outsized in appearance and impact.
And so it is with today’s featured item, one that his latest work, posted yesterday, inspired me to revisit. It’s a ring, not a category from which I usually draw for Thursday posts, but this one was exceptional.
Yesterday’s new work was a coil bracelet, the latest in Wings’s new collection of spiraling stone accents. It had all the appearance of an earthen vortex, growing as it did out of a series of beads in brilliant greens and warm golden and coppery brown shades. It reminded me of a much older piece from a wholly different class of jewelry: a ring he created some six or seven years ago in similar colors that evoked similar motifs.
The focal point, of course, was that stone: for a ring, exceptionally large and perfectly round, manifest in emerald green with glowing mists of metallic gold- and copper-colored matrix. It looked for all the world like a world in itself: a technicolor topographical map of Turtle Island. Such a stone deserved a simple, elegant setting that would not detract from its beauty, yet one that would not be overwhelmed by the stone’s own bold complexity. Creating silverwork that accomplishes that task requires navigating a very fine line.
Wings succeeded beautifully.
He set the ring into a very simple scalloped bezel, low in profile to afford the stone’s light doming pride of place. A slender strand of twisted silver formed the stone’s only other accent.
But the band . . . .
The band was formed of a length of wide, heavy-gauge sterling silver, weighty and substantial. He scored it on both sides with deep, heavy lines placed at intervals across its width, running on a slight diagonal.
When it came time to attach band to bezel, he made one simple change that turned an ordinary solitaire into something extraordinary: He off-set the two ends of the band, following the angle of the scored lines, so that instead of the ends meeting flush beneath the stone, they were placed atop one another.
Careful sculpting and shaping ensured that the ring lay flat against the skin all the way around the finger, as it would have done with a an ordinary plain band, and the bezel lay similarly flat and centered on the top.
At first glance, it looked like an ordinary ring, albeit with a truly exceptional stone. Seen up close, it looked like a vortex, the Earth itself sitting at the spiraling center of the cosmos.
For peoples whose origin stories are ones of emergence, it was a beautifully subtle summoning of the story of creation, an embodiment of the earth’s very existence.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
