At its best, love keeps us grounded even as it allows us to touch the arc of the light. That’s true of any sort of love, romantic, platonic, filial, or the love of the spirits.
It’s what allows the human race to survive.
On what has been an extraordinarily difficult day, I find my thoughts reaching for such touchstones: the solidity of the earth, the ethereal beauty of the light, and the power of love that bridges the two, allowing us to move freely between them, never losing sight of higher realms, but never losing our footing entirely, either.
It put me in mind of one of Wings’s small simple works from about eight years ago, an everlasting hoop of precious metal, ends meeting in an orb of pure white light.
Wings has already created rings in a variety of traditional styles, from multi-stone blossom designs to solid silver bands to complex overlay and gemwork to spare, simple solitaires. One of his best, to my mind, came from the last grouping in that list: the one featured here today, a moonstone solitaire.
This one, as always, began with the band.
Native rings tend to be bigger and bolder than those by non-Native artists, with emphasis on solidity and substance within their own distinctive styles. The same is true of solitaires: Whereas most people think of a “solitaire” as, most often, a diamond engagement ring in the classical style, a very slender band topped by a stone large usually only in relative terms, obviously virtually any one-stone ring can be a solitaire. It needs only a band and a, yes, solitary stone.
Wings cut this band from relatively heavy silver — just thick enough for its solidity to be felt, substantial enough that when he filed the edges smooth, he was able to bevel them ever so slightly, giving the band an invisible but nonetheless perceptible feel of slightly rounded edges. That served as its sole adornment, save the stone — that and the delicate Florentine finish buffed into its surface, which gave it a silken look and feel.
Once he had soldered the ends of the band together, he set the bezel and soldered it into place. He chose a plain style for this bezel, with a smooth low-profile edge, the better to show off the cabochon that would eventually be set into it even as it highlighted the soft beauty of the band.
And the stone was something else. Today, the most popular form of moonstone is what’s known as rainbow moonstone — not surprising, given that its clear adularescence produces an array of colors from within the stone itself, not unlike that of opal. Much less attention is now paid to ordinary white moonstone, which is in fact extraordinaryin its own right. White moonstone is opaque in color, although not in sheen; instead of the translucence found in rainbow moonstone, labradorite, and some opal, it shimmers and shines with a mineral glow known as chatoyance, a slightly pearlescent effect that produces a vertical line-like image across the stone, giving it an appearance much like a cat’s eye (hence the term chatoyance, which translates from the French literally to “cat-like,” or, more specifically, to shine like a cat’s eye).
This was an outstanding specimen.
It was small and round and highly domed, the last quality relatively rare for white moonstones. The cabochon itself was nearly pure white, with just the slightest hint of dove gray along its sides, much like the color found in some pearls. Indeed, it could almost have passed for a pearl . . . but for the cat’s eye at the center. The chatoyant line was brilliant white, shining so brightly in the light as to be nearly silver, and giving the stone a slightly mirror-like effect at its center.
Unlike some chatoyant stones, whose “cat’s eye” becomes clearly visible only when artificial light is shined directly upon its face, this moonstone glowed in natural light like the very moon for which it was named.
It felt a bit like having captured a literal ray of light to wear upon one’s hand.
It also felt like a bridge between worlds, between states of being: a silvery gift of the earth coiling upward to meet at the center in a burst of white light from the realm where the moon’s spirit dwells.
It felt, in that regard, very much like love.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
