We have spent the week thus far exploring the wisdom of the trees: of their visions and dreams, of the lessons they teach us daily by example.
It’s easy to look up to the trees; after all, we do so in very literal terms. Most stand far taller than we, and unlike us, are able to touch the dwelling place of the spirits, at least at the lower edges of the sky. But their smaller cousins, the plant spirits, possess wisdom, too: They receive their own visions, dream their own dreams, and when we are fortunate, they share such wisdom with us.
Today’s throwback is relatively recent; we’re going back only two months, almost to the day. It’s a pair of earrings commissioned by a dear friend who has amassed a fairly substantial collection of Wings’s work, including several commissioned pieces. She had bought a pair of earrings recently in a particular style, square cabochons atop dangling flared pendants, and was so taken with the style that she commissioned two more pairs, each featuring a different stone. Perhaps I should put the word stone in quotation marks, because the ones in today’s featured work a technically not stones at all, but the design is one that evokes the wisdom of the plant spirits and the dreams of the night.
Here in the desert Southwest, we are blessed with a number of highly unusual, uniquely beautiful plants. Many are cacti, able to survive and thrive in conditions of high heat and almost no water. Some plants have adapted to the environment by blooming, and pollinating, only at night. One is the plant that has long been known colloquially as jimson weed, otherwise known as datura. These days, you will often see it labeled “sacred datura,” but know that that is a descriptor imposed from without. It may be sacred to certain indigenous peoples, but labels and descriptions have, in recent decades, been ripped out of context and warped by appropriation and commodification.
It’s a plant that has another colloquial name, one that better captures its delicate beauty — and, indeed, its very identity — than “jimson weed”: Moonflower.
Now, to be clear, there are several species of datura; the moonflower is the smallest. But it’s a beautiful plant with a beautiful name, one bestowed because it blooms only at night — i.e., beneath the moon. And its spirit wound up infusing one of Wings’s recent pairs of earrings.
They did not begin inspired by jimson weed, of course. The first iteration of the general design featured lapis lazuli. The friend who bought that pair then wanted to supplement them with a couple more pairs in the same general style. Wings had recently bought a small collection of square cabochons, specifically for the purpose of designing earrings, and I went over his inventory with her to see which stones spoke to her. She settled on malachite and the pair you see here, which are, as I said, not technically a “stone” at all, but shell: black-lip mother-of-pearl. It’s a form of mother-of-pearl shell that bears a distinctly smoky cast, not precisely black, but a rather iridescent charcoal color that changes shade and intensity in the light. They make for mysteriously beautiful cabochons, and she chose those for one pair.
Wings’s design called for a pair of matched earrings pendants in a roughly triangular shape, hand-cut at the base in a wing-like flange that looked a bit like the notched shaft of an arrow. It imparted a sense of motion, of ascension, drawing the eye upward even as they danced below. He gave each pendant a three-dimensional character and depth by soldering tiny delicate strands of sterling silver half-round wire to either edge. Inside each pendant, he stamped a four round sacred hoops, a sacred number of tiny raindrops descending to a cactus blossom just opening, an image that constituted a perfect metaphor for this place where water is life.
These were not ordinary cactus blossoms, though, oh, no. These were night-blooming flowers, the moonflower. Each pendant hung suspended from posts by way of sterling silver jump rings, and the posts held the focal point of each earring: small square cabochons of smoky black-lip mother-of-pearl, the color of a rain-clouded night sky lit by the moon, each square arranged a half-turn to form the diamond shape that represent the Eye of Spirit, the power of wisdom and guidance, of visions and dreams.
What emerged from the creative process was a pair of mysterious drops embodying the rare and sacred night-blooming flower and its dreams of luxuriant and life-sustaining rain . . . and their name: The Moonflower Dreams of Rain. It’s a reminder that we are always linked to earth and sky, even on cloudy and barely moonlit nights, and the dreams that are given to us also give us life.
~ 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.
