In this space a week ago, on a day ostensibly devoted to thanksgiving, I wrote of gratitude for hope: that free spirit that refuses, in the face of all circumstance, to give up or give in entirely.
A week later, and that tremulous hope and great trepidation have both been supplanted by simple joy.
After three weeks of worry and fear, we learned yesterday that our friend is safe. This, too, is a day for thanksgiving.
We began this week in the company of spirits that, for Wings and for me, embody hope and joy: horses, ancient indigenous and more recent arrivals, wild to the point of feral and thoroughly domesticated alike. Our own are members of our family, friends and teachers, guardians and guides. They possess knowledge at which we can only guess, most of the time — an ability to perceive that which remains stubbornly invisible to us, and to know when to fear and when to befriend it. In the darkening days of autumn that flow restlessly into winter, they feel and see the forces and spirits that move between worlds, and yet they manage mostly to remain firmly grounded.
Horses, even ones like those who find their way inexplicably to us, those so badly damaged by abuse and neglect, engage with their world on a much more practical level than we humans do. Their fears are open and honest and entirely well-founded, and the purity of their sense of hope is . model for us all.
It’s the same with joy: Our horses jump and race, buck and pitch, for the sheer delight of the movement. The knowledge that new hay is forthcoming, a cool clear day free of humidity, a new-fallen snow — all are sufficient grounds for expressions of joy. We humans get too often bound up in our fears to notice that there remain moments in life that are cause for celebration.
Wings has long found inspiration in the spirit of the horse, including, literally, the Spirit Horse, a dream-world visitant who inspired one of his signature series. But about a dozen years ago, he created a couple of variants on the Spirit Horse, partial images given form in a full three dimensions, as though the horse itself were emerging from the dream world into this one, with the portion still on the other side of that veil still hidden from view. Both were pins; one was studded with stones — lapis, amethyst, and garnet, if memory serves — while the other was pure shimmering silver, adorned with spirit symbols without need for jewels.
As always, Wings began with form and shape, summoning the miniature spirit into being by way of silver. he cut the outlines freehand, an expressively rounded head, gracefully arched neck, flowing articulated mane and the forefront of a body not merely running but leaping eagerly from world to the next. Beyond back and thighs, the horse’s back end remained a mere suggestion, as though still hidden by the veil between the world of dreams and this one.
The same tiny jeweler’s saw that he used to coax chin and ears and mane and hooves into being was pressed into service in a secondary way: He carefully pierced the silver between the forelegs, in the side of the neck, and across the breadth of the body, then meticulously excised the silver from the space in a process known as ajouré — a French term that means, quite simply, “saw-cut.” It gave the horse a liminal look, further emphasizing its status as spirit being, a visionary creature of dream realms who makes itself known to us, but whose very self is too complex for us to perceive in whole.
Once the outline form was complete, all edges filed silky smooth, Wings turned to the stampwork. Very often, he chooses only two or three stamps to complete a piece, but this one required a more complex approach; as a spirit of the spaces between one manifest as silvery light without benefit of gemstone accents, it would be the stampwork that would identify and define it.
The basic features were fairly simple: a single tiny hoop, more a dot, really, to form the eye; an arrowhead-like point for the ears; a pair of crescent moons to define the musculature of cheek and jaw. The mane was given definition by way of paired stamps, a pointed hoofprint at the base of each strand, rising upward into another point formed by paired and tapered lines.
Then Wings turned to the body.
Along the topline of the ajouré cutout on the side of the neck, he placed three sunrise symbols, a small radiant sky above stylized clouds. Along the cutouts baseline, which ran from chest upward to jaw, he chased a repeating pattern of five arrowhead points, each open at the base and nested above the one below it. Between the cutouts on the neck and the body, where the horse’s own heart would naturally be, he placed paired hearts — symbols of love that transcends worlds.
For the body, Wings returned to some of the same stamps that he had used on the head and neck. The horse’s topline he created with the same sunrise-above-the-clouds stamp that he used on the neck, this time turned sideways and repeated ten times, gently enough to ensure the presence of the sun with only a hint of the clouds. Next, he once again picked up the hoofprint stamp that formed the base of the mane and used it to create the baseline of the torso. He then moved to the front of the torso, at the point where it met the right foreleg, and created a bit of muscular definition by using the same hoofprint stamp twice, conjoined at the base so that it pointed upwards and downwards. Beneath that, he used the same crescent moons that appeared on the horse’s jaw to define the right knee and left thigh.
At this point, all that remained was the suggestion of hind legs at the rear of the piece. At the point where torso and hind legs meet, he placed an upward-facing arrowhead symbol, one that he often uses, paired, to create Eyes of Spirit. Beneath, on what manifested as part of the hind leg, he placed a centered blossom, flanked on each side by three tiny outward-facing crescent moons — images to reflect the abundance of the dream world and the guidance it offers.
Once the stampwork was complete, he turned the piece over and domed it lightly, repoussé-fashion, so that the horse would rest properly over the pin assembly on the back, and to accentuate the sense of motion its shape provided. He then soldered the pin assembly securely onto the reverse, turned it back over and oxidized all of the stampwork, and then buffed it to medium polish — glossier than Florentine, yet not enough for a mirror finish, as though evoking the misty shimmer of the dream world whence it came.
This horse was born of silver and dreams, emergent in pure simple joy.
We would do well to find such joy and hope in its world, and in our own.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2018; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
