Today has been a mix of clouds and sun, with the clouds never absent, only apparently indecisive. After a brief shower early this afternoon, now, as the workday hours wane, they seem to have decided on a course of action: one that involves heavy rains driving in hard and cold from the northwest.
Today’s post is appearing late because we had to run into town to ship some items via carriers at different locations. Our route took us along the main highway past the fields at the feet of the peaks, and for the amount of green still dominant on the peaks and otherwise, there was a remarkable amount of early fire, as well. Tomorrow, there will be a lot less green visible, and while there will be a lot more red and orange and golden leaves, there will also be a lot more of them on the ground.
At this moment, there is a fire also in the woodstove, flames dancing like the leaves of the maple in the wind outside the window, flashes of gold and amber and copper and crimson that have turned a whole month early and will no longer be with us by the time of their usual transformation, much closer to October’s end. We are fortunate to have both the woodstove and these adobe walls that hold in the heat so effectively against the elements; as cold as it is likely to get very soon, we have the advantage of safe and comfortable warmth indoors.
These are the days of last green and early fire, with this evening’s equinox feeling, for once, like the fulcrum around which both pivot now.
I know it’s popular to call this the first day of fall, but the fact of the matter is that official autumn does not begin here until 7:04 PM, with less than a quarter of the day left beneath its banner. Tomorrow will be the first full day of fall, but in truth, autumn has been with us since August here, the leaves already turning beneath a finely-honed edge upon the wind.
Such thoughts put me in mind of this week’s #TBT featured work, one that dates back at least to 2007, and if I’m not mistaken, actually to 2006: sixteen years, and probably some odd months, as well. It was, I thought the first time I saw it, the newest entry in Wings’s signature series of Pueblo pins, although I was struck by the presence of two cabochons instead of the customary one, and by its seemingly larger size. At first, I thought I must be imagining the latter. Then I turned it over . . . to find a French clip on the reverse side of the barrette.
It’s one of only two or three Pueblo barrettes he’s ever created that I can recall: If memory serves, there was a second one set with Sleeping Beauty turquoise; there was another that was not wrought in this saw-cut style, but was a Pueblo barrette all the same, the outlines of the Pueblo’s great houses wrought via stampwork across the domed surface of a butterfly-shaped triangle of silver. But it explained the larger size, which would otherwise have been easy to write off to imagination without a Pueblo pin beside it for reference.
As always with this series, it began with the stampwork: a few quick sketched straight lines to set the boundaries on the silver, then allowing walls and rooflines to take shape via sampwork with a simple serrated-edge chisel stamp. He used a stamp in the shape of a tiny round hoop to evoke the vigas, and a very short, plain chisel-end stamp for the windows. A longer version was chased upright at angles to create the posts of the ladders, then struck in repetitions of four horizontally to form the rungs on all three. Only then did the cutwork begin.
Typically, Wings creates three or four of the Pueblo pins at a time, their size just right for that number to fill a small partial-sheet of silver if their placement is alternated to face each other. With the barrettes, though, Wings had to elongate his mental template, them make it proportionally higher, too, and so I suspect that it was a one-off, one that perhaps fit perfectly within an unusually-sized scrap of silver left over from other works. using it this way ensures that nothing useable goes to waste (and, of course, we eventually trade in the so-called “dirty” silver, the scrap, for smaller amounts of clean silver).
Either way, he would have begun the saw-work at one end, moving up the outer wall, then navigating each of the right angles that formed the corners of the rooflines, crenellated at various levels all across the top. He cuts such pieces all in one setting, always moving forward, never back, and the last part to be cut would have been the bottom of the pin, moving the filament-thin blade of the jeweler’s saw meticulously in and out of the tight spaces that form the doors, all while cutting the bottom edge along the arc you see, which is part of what allows the barrette to rest properly on the hair (or, in the case of the Pueblo pins, on the fabric, felt, or other surface).
Once the cutwork was complete, he would have turned it over, still flat, to add his hallmark, and then begung the work of shaping it. For this design, in both pin and barrette form, he domes them slightly, repoussé-fashion (from the reverse), just as he would do with a concha. Why? Because doming it permits the ends to lie directly on the relevant surface (a shit ro dress or hat for a pin; for a barrette, one’s hair). The gentle arcallows gravity to work with both the design and the surface instead of against them, so that the piece doesn’t droop, flip over, or snag on anything. Then he would have soldered the French clip securely into place.
It’s the little touches that make a piece.
Design-wise, the bezels for the stones are typically the last task he undertakes. That’s not to say that he might not already have the stones selected; he very often does. But the placement of the bezel comes last, and it’s a wise decision not only physically but aesthetically: With regard to the former, you don’t want to solder the bezels into place first, then have them be damaged in the process of doming or adding the weight of the French clip on the back; as far as te second concern goes, doming turns a two-dimensional work into a three-dimensional one, whichchanges the appearance of a piece enough to alter perspective. You want the stone, or, as here, stones, plural, to be placed in a balanced way, so as not to force the eye to one side or the other while simultaneously not detracting or distracting from the stampwork that extends end to end.
I no longer recall what time of year it was when he created this particular piece, but it would’ve been perfect for this season: malachite and garnet, the last bands of green in the fields and down the mountain slopes, arrrayed against the new scarlet fire of nascent fall.
Back then, of course, our seasonal transformations appearaed more or less on schedule, very different from what colonialism-driven climate catastrophe and a twelve-hundred-year drought have conspired to create here now.
And still, the rain continues; the forecast suggests that it will become heavier in the next few hours and likely continue, perhaps somewhat intermittently, into the earliest hours of tomorrow morning. And while the longer-range forecast still shows highs in the seventies, it’s only barely, with those numbers falling fast and the nighttime lows faster still.
I suspect that we shall see a great many of the leaves on the ground by morning. Of those that remain on the branches, our first full day of official autumn will see a lot less green, with many more already turned, as well. There is a bit of a melancholy aspect at work here; early fall rains and colder nights result less in the flame-colored amber and pumpkin and scarlet shades than they do in a dull brown. But it will not get them all.
These are the days of last green and early fire, and we celebrate every brief moment of their dance.
~ Aji
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