In a week devoted to the art of spirits of the waters and their relationship to the other elements, it seemed an apt time to showcase today’s featured work, one from three or four years ago: a tiny turtle hat pin made with charoite.
This piece was a very special commission, made for a dear friend who gave it as a gift to her husband, a man for whom Turtle has special significance. It was actually one of a pair: a larger turtle designed as a lapel pin, and this one, to be worn on his fisherman’s cap. Both were made with charoite stones as the center shell, but the stones manifested in very different patterns. This friend’s favorite color is purple, and so his wife wanted to have a pair made for him using a purple stone, with the only other caveat being that it be made with something other than the more usual amethyst.
That one condition limited the pool of available gemstones to only a few options. Sugilite was an obvious choice, but a lot of it tends to be duller in color, with a great deal of white in it, and wings’s sense was that she wanted her husband’s favorite shade, deep, intense, and brilliantly beautiful. After some research to find out what was readily available, we settled on charoite, a stone from a very specific area of Siberia, a region now once again part of Russia.
In this instance, it proved to be impossible (at least on the necessary timetable) to find two such stones in the proper sizes for both pins. However, we found some beautiful stones Wings wound up cutting and cabbing this one out of a larger slab, chosen specifically for its wide variation of color and matrix. The original slab was oddly trapezoidal, deep violet and plum at the wider base, lightening and fanning out into bronze and gold and white shades at the narrower top.
Wings cut an oval from the base and cabbed it into the proper shape for a small turtle shell, then set about making the pin itself. He’s created a variety of turtles for these friends, but they are particularly fond of the stylized, geometric shape found here, one that seems more classically Native than the more realistic version with fully articulated legs. And so he sketched the design, pointed snout and stubby four-toed legs and a barely-curving tail, then cut it out freehand with a jeweler’s saw.
He left the face free of extraneous detail, adding only two tiny round bezels to hold the moonstone cabochons that, once set, would serve as the eyes. He gave the tail some subtle vertical scaling, just a few quick strokes. The legs and feet proved to be a stroke of genius, because the particular form of stampwork he chose wound up magnifying the effect of the finish: He stamped each one deeply, but sparingly, just enough to separate leg from foot and articulate the toes. He created a scalloped bezel to hold the stone “shell,” then set to buffing it.
It was at this point that this particular iteration of Turtle began to come into its own. Wings chose a specialized finish for it, one that combines the intense and fiery glow of a high polish with the soft subtle warmth of a Florentine finish. It made the turtle’s body seem to glow from within, catching the light of the moonstone “eyes” — and picking up the warm deep hues of the charoite.
And that charoite cab was truly something special. As I noted above, Wings chose the darkest, most intensely-hued portion of the stone for this piece. In looking at it, it was nearly impossible to separate background color from matrix, so thoroughly did the swirl of colors blend. And yet, they retained their integrity as colors, imparting an almost liquid sense of motion to the stone, creating a “shell” of flowing, angled “plates.” The background color, if it can reasonably be labeled “background,” was orchid, swirled with understated bits of white. Visible atop the orchid color were wavy lines of violet and plum, inky tones underlaid with bits of blue-black at one end of the spectrum, and a metallic hint of gold at the other. On the lower left, one tiny patch of deep purple like a geometric inkblot rested above s swatch of brilliant shimmering gold.
Once the cab was set into the bezel, the entire piece settled firmly into its own identity. The interplay between the intense jewel tones of the charoite cab and the glowing finish of the turtle’s body seemed to lock into place into a perfect symbiotic dance of color and light — almost as though Turtle were emerging from deep violet waters onto gold earth, touched by the sun’s silver light. The moonstone eyes only added to that effect, and seemed to imbue this tiny spirit with the magic and power of both day and night.
This piece periodically adorns its owner’s cap. When it does, it journeys with him, far and wide. With luck and a little help from the spirits, it enables him to travel wearing a little of the same armor that infuses Turtle’s own shell: the forces of earth and water, the light of day and night.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
