Sometimes the skies deliver when we’re least aware of it.
We went to bed last night under a solid veil of rainless clouds, the sort of sky that accomplishes nothing beyond hiding the moon and stars. I awakened moments before four o’clock to find that they had cleared out entirely, leaving a black velvet blanket beaded with diamonds in their wake.
Of course, by that time of the early hours here in summer, the sun is already on its ascent; it’s possible to see the faintest fading of the black above the peaks to the east, although the rest of the sky remains the color of polished jet. Dark enough, certainly, to fall asleep again . . . and we awakened to a sun veiled once more by low clouds and glistening fog, a heavy rain having fallen in the interim in near-silence.
Sometimes our prayers find their way to the rays of the sun, even when we have no way of knowing it.
In that, we a perhaps granted help from other spirits, even if unbeknownst to us. Our nonhuman relatives with whom we share this land of course have a vested interest in a balanced climate, where season and weather are in harmony. And while it is Eagle who lends us his feather to send our prayers to Spirit on skyward-spiraling tendrils of smoke, in recent days, are guardians here have been our other raptors in residence: two giant red-tailed hawks, both so large that from a distance, they could be mistaken for young golden eagles.
This week’s featured #TBT work, a throwback to, if memory serves, the end of official summer in 2010, is manifest as the great raptor’s feathers, conjoined into a single dazzling cuff and wrapped with a shaft made of rays of silver sunlight.
This is one of Wings’s informal signature series, most often expressed in bracelet form but occasionally as a pendant or necklace or pair of earrings, or, in one memorable case, as a barrette. He frequently accents such pieces with gemstones, but in this instance, he kept it classic: solid sterling silver of a fairly solid gauge, perhaps 14 or a bit heavier, with saw-work, stampwork, and the shaft overlay its only adornments.
But, of course, it all began with the silver.
As I said, and as you can see from the photo immediately below, this one was created out of a decently heavy gauge of sterling silver — thick, solid, substantial, just lightweight enough to permit the wearer to adjust its fit on the wrist. Wings has a number of hand-drawn templates that can use for the outlines, but typically, he makes only a few quick lines for proportion and size, and then goes back and draws in the detail work, including the random placement of the separations in the feather barbs, for realistic effect.
Once the dimensions are set, he uses a fine-bladed chisel-end stamp, perfectly straight, to score the hundreds of barbs on either side of each feather’s center. This cuff consists of two feathers joined at the bases of their shafts into one, a union of two elements in one single wide strand of silver. This means that there are four feather halves that need to be scored, and to do it all freehand is an extraordinary amount of fine labor.
Once the barbs are added, he chooses a selection of plain round hoop-shaped stamps of varying sizes, then scatters them in not-quite-random patterns across the surface of each of the four halves of the feathers’ top sides. I say “not-quite-random” because a truly random placement would not reflect the genetic patterns of the mottling found on actual eagle feathers. They are, of course, intended to be stylized representations only, but it’s a nod toward their real-life design.
With the surface pattern complete, Wings turned his attention to the shaft. He typically uses a fine strand of sterling silver half-round wire (or occasionally, round, triangular, or square), overlaid atop the center of the two linked feathers and soldered securely from one end to the other. Such was the case here, but with another of his signature details added before overlaying it: a single small stamped motif chased minutely down the entire slightly-convex surface of the strand in a fine, close repeating pattern. It involves close, tight, meticulous work, with deep stamping required and scores of blows of the heavy jeweler’s hammer. In this instance, he chose a geometric, almost Art Deco-ish sunrise symbol, giving an added radiance to the wire even by itself.
Stampwork complete, he placed the wire the full length of the twinned feathers to center it, wrapping it three times around the middle section linking the two, then stretching each end to its tip. He overlaid it carefully in place, soldering as he went to keep it in the exact center. Then he placed the band against a mandrel and hammered it gently into the proper arc.
All that remained was the finish. He oxidized the stampwork on the shaft and the joins between it and the cuff, as well as all of the stampwork and scorework on the feathers’ surface, and buffed the entire piece to a high polish, enough to burnish a bit of the ridging from the barbs while still laving hem as radiant as the tiny sunrises tracing the shaft.
It’s been too many years for me to recall the purchaser now, but it did not remain in inventory long. Perhaps it was acquired by someone who needed their own help with prayers. Seeing it again today in these images, though, has reminded me that the lesson of this morning is one we need to keep firmly in mind. Our prayers find their way to the rays of the sun, to the sky spirits and those simply of the skies, even when we are not aware of it . . . and they are answered, too.
~ Aji
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