The new year’s forecast here was a bleak one: For the first fifteen days of 2020, the entire length of the extended forecast, there would be no snow. In a world still struggling with long-term drought and the shorter-term impacts of last year’s intensified form, it foreshadowed dark days indeed.
That was yesterday.
This morning, the snow is flying — still mostly unpredicted, but here all the same, shifting between tiny cold flurries and heavy near-whiteout conditions and back again with remarkable abandon. Perhaps Mother Earth made her own prayers to the skies. If so, they have been answered with some immediacy.
Our cosmologies are full of stories of spirits seeking the aid of others. They are full, too, of feminine and femme-identified beings who, by their bravery or strength or selflessness, save whole worlds. Today’s featured work, a throwback to a decade or so ago that combines aspects of the silverwork featured here on both the last and first days of these respective calendar years, embodies the best of such beings and their stories — in this instance, one of holding a new world in the light.
I’ve written before about the old account, from some traditions, of how Grandmother Turtle saved the First People, and thus, our world as we know it. As a metaphor, it’s certainly fitting now: a planet both plunged into the deep throes of winter and elsewhere cast into the flames, presided over by fascism’s avatars and the outriders of global destruction, not a drop of humility to be collected from among their collective drought-ridden souls. A new calendar year, a new world born not amid the waters of life but those of corruption, of moral mummification and ethical rot and everywhere, a planet dying in the process of trying to be reborn. And on all sides, no salvation to be found.
For humanity persists in seeking saviors — “leaders,” “rulers” — from the privileged classes of those who wield wealth and authority and control, rather than from the humble spirits of the earth herself, those best equipped to ensure our own survival.
Today’s throwback feature is manifest in an old traditional silverwork style that dates back more than a century here: a miniature collector’s spoon, harking back to a tradition of Indigenous metalsmithing that married function and use to extraordinary beauty. We used this space on Tuesday to highlight some of Wings’s current incarnations of this style. But if Tuesday’s work was the substance, yesterday’s was the symbol, a masterwork that included two matched versions of Grandmother Turtle to support its own small world.
This piece, shown above here today, was a miniature collector’s spoon from which Turtle herself emerged at one end: an anchor, a foundation, in the rain and in the light. No stones here; this one was all silver.
With the spoons, Wings’s approach varies. Sometimes he cuts the spoon out of the silver first, freeing it from its surroundings freehand with a tiny jeweler’s saw. Sometimes he draws it in outline, freehand, in the company of others, and begins with the stampwork before excising it from its metal embrace. In this instance, I seem to recall that it was one a several that he created at roughly the same time, and so I suspect he took the latter approach.
And the stampwork on this one was at once simple and complex, spare lines and shapes that nonetheless told a multilayered story. At the center of the spoon’s bowl, he fashioned a Morning Star: one formed with two stamps, a single tiny central hoop, and four spokes, each struck individually, in a shape like a tapered chisel’s end. He then chose two more stamps, similar in shape and style but vastly different in size, to create the edgework: a large radiant crescent shape, like a moon not quite half full, chased around the oval edge at intervals, each end of their arcs linked by a smaller crescent, one in the form of a rising sun. Bowl complete, it evoked the feel of a nascent dawn, star and moon still prominent, only slight space yet ceded to the sun — a world just being born into a new and rising light.
But in a land such as this, light is not enough for life; water is required. Birth itself requires water, and both ends of this piece emerged from a line of thunderstorms, their clouds meticulously chased down the whole length of the handle. It’s hard to do such a long line of stampwork freehand and still keep it mostly straight and even, but he did it.
Lastly, Wings turned his attention to the handle’s end. He had designed in in the outlined shape of a turtle, a pattern that has formed the basis for several among his own various signature series of turtle silverwork pieces. This was, necessarily, smaller than most, but of similar shape: a rather vintage style, with straight legs and pointed head and tail emerging from an oval shell. He gave it its own unique identity and character by way of the stampwork, which he kept very simple and spare: two impossibly tiny divots for eyes, a little linework on the legs and feet, a point for the tail, and at the center off the shell, a miniature turtle of its own, perhaps an animating spirit.
Stampwork complete, he cut out the entire spoon, freehand, in one single piece. Once in a while, he will create a spoon in which the animal or other spirit at the top necessarily must be attached separately, simply by virtue of the overall design, but that was not the case here. In this instance, the turtle emerged, fully formed, from the handle’s shaft, its tail deliberately not fully free of the silver surrounding it. This is all much harder than it looks: a long, slender, slightly flared shaft is simple enough on its own, but to turn the tiny saw blades from there to a perfectly rounded near-circle on one end, to an oval ending at five diminutive points in legs and a triangular head at the other, all of a piece, with no breaks? That’s skill, honed over long years of labor and experience.
Once the design was cut free, Wings turned it over and gently domed the spoon’s bowl, shaping it gently — concave from the top, convex from the reverse, with the handle raised ever so slightly from the point of attachment. This turned it into a fully functional spoon. He then oxidized the stampwork on the whole piece, and buffed it to medium-high polish.
I no longer recall when this piece sold, nor to whom; as I said, if memory serves, it was one of several created simultaneously. It was, however, the only one of its particular grouping to manifest in form and shape of the humblest of spirits, Grandmother Turtle: she who saved the First People, holding a new world in the light.
At the outset of this new year, it’s a reminder to us that we, too, hold the new world born with it — if not precisely on our backs, at the very least in our hands. It is up to us to ensure that we do our part to hold it in the light.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
