The day has dawned very, very cold. Not, perhaps, quite as cold as the forecast predicted — a few high, thin clouds moved in overnight, just enough to hold a little of the earth’s heat close to her body — but still near enough to zero to be dangerous. Even the dogs spent no more than a few moments outside.
The water came again a few days ago, dancing down the ditches of its own accord. No one sent for it, no one brought it down, although the weirs were already turned in such a way that it permitted passage onto the land here. But the water chose its own course, flowing downward to pool gently in the pond’s dry reservoir.
The pond is now ice.
It will thaw again, and before long, beneath the warmth of the midday sun; eventually, the small amount that remains will evaporate, choosing once again to join the air in the skies before it descends again as snow. But whatever form it takes— water, ice, evaporative mist, snow — the water is its own, and comes and goes where and as it will.
This elemental spirit and its equally elemental force inspired today’s throwback, one that takes us back only two short months to the days the straddle the line between September and October. It is not a single work, but two, comprising three separate pieces that are nonetheless all of a piece themselves, a unified set. It was a commission, one that came to us seemingly out of the same blue that holds the water itself.
In mid-September, I was contacted by a gentleman who was seeking an anniversary gift for his wife. Time was short; delivery would be required before the end of the first two weeks of October. One of Wings’s earlier works here on the site had captured his attention, but it had been sold nearly two years ago: a necklace entitled A Little Jar of Rain. Its focal point was a teardrop-shaped cabochon of ribbon turquoise, the bezel hand-stamped on the reverse in patterns that called to mind traditional ollas, or water jars. It was capped by a tiny malachite cabochon and studded with little water drops in the form of stamped ingot beads dripping from the bezel’s base.
Unfortunately, of course, ribbon turquoise is impossible to match except from slabs cut from the same vein. Wings did have a number of boulder and ribbon turquoise cabochons in varying sizes and shapes and patterns in his inventory of stones, but the challenge was to find one of suitable dimensions for the necklace, and to find a matched pair that would coordinate sufficiently well to create the earrings the client wanted to accompany the necklace — and to do so in the allotted time frame.
So Wings set to work.
We pulled out his entire inventory of cabochons and sorted out every piece of boulder and ribbon turquoise in stock. In the process, we came across the stunning oval shown above — significantly larger than the teardrop in A Little Jar of Rain, and of significantly greater value, as well. The host rock was richly textured in earthy shades of beige and taupe and bronze, with small translucent wisps of ivory flowing across the surface like sheer clouds. The ribbons of turquoise were brilliant sky blue, like sharp slender streams of water flowing across the land, diverging and converging again in the same way that the rivers do here, the arteries that keep the land alive. The stone was also webbed with other matrix, rusty copper and bits of golden bronze earth; combined with the turquoise, the surface of the stone was nearly opalized, and glowed with its own light. The earrings were not of the same vein as the pendant, but they were similar enough in color of both turquoise and host rock to coordinate well with it.
He set all three stones into hand-made bezels, but when it came time to create the bezels themselves, he departed a bit from the design used in the earlier piece that had initially captured the client’s interest. This pendant was substantially larger, and the oval required a different sort of balancing. Instead of a separate stone “cap” and a cascade of five ingot drops. He chose instead to create eight ingot “drops” of similar size. He suspended four of them from the base of the pendant’s oval bezel, then added a pair to the end of each of the earrings.
When we shipped the set to the client, I sent him a description of the symbolism via e-mail. It was a set whose inspiration would prove to be oddly in tune with the themes of this particular week: reflections of the nature of water, of its spirit and power and what it can teach us. In abbreviated form, this is that description:
The name of the set is When the Water Comes. Oddly enough, I actually wrote about that particular phrasing on his blog about a year or so ago; you can read that piece here . . . .
Here, we say in very real terms that “water is life.” It’s an old saying, one that precedes European contact; it’s land that, for all the precipitation it gets, is still desert, and still subject to frequent droughts. His people have engaged in sophisticated agricultural practices for a millennium, at least, and even now, planting and irrigation are still largely done the old way, with hand-dug ditches that bring the water down from the rivers that run out of the mountains by way of a very old but complex system of weirs and gates and ditching. But people here tend to use the phrase “the water came” to describe its arrival on the land; it’s partly a recognition of its value, partly of the fact that things could’ve gone wrong, partly of the fact that we don’t always bring it – sometimes it just comes on its own, and when it does, it’s a gift to be handled accordingly.
The three ribbon turquoise cabochons are the earth, with the rivers and streams criss-crossing and converging and flowing apart again. The four ingot beads at the base of the pendant signify the Four Sacred Directions, as do the two pairs (taken together) on the earrings. On the back, the imagery evokes both the mountains and rivers and the inward pointing of the Four Winds toward the center. For many of our peoples, there is a place of emergence, whence The People first appeared on the land; in traditions such as the Native American Church, there is a vortex; and in some stories, there are also places of convergence; some traditions have all of these, which collectively point to a sacred space at the center of all things. Without getting overly esoteric, the two sides of the piece are meant to bring together the idea of life as universal and infinite: flowing up from the center outward; flowing back to the center in an unending circle.
It’s a reminder that the water goes when and where it will, and in this property lies its power, its essential strength. It’s also a reminder that when the water comes, it is a gift, one we should honor.
~ 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.
