We had a freeze warning last night, with another slated for tonight. It was well-advised; there was a rime of ice on the one of the dogs’ outdoor water dishes this morning (although they have another that’s heated). Today will be a bit cooler, especially if the wind rises again.
Even so, the day has dawned clear, if cold; spring has not yet ceded its space to summer. Proof of that is the same haze the hangs in the air — no clouds in sight, but plenty of dust and detritus from yesterday’s winds, cottonwood pollen everywhere, and remnant edges of smoke plumes distant to the west and south.
Still, our small world here is awash in a brilliant display of color and light, glowing, expansive, and impossibly old and wise.
The blue overhead today — thanks to the haze, neither cornflower nor indigo, but that perfect sky blue of both Crayola fame and the clearest of turquoise — is unbroken by any line, only the merest gradient altering its shades in any way. It’s a perfect sky for the waning days of spring, its clarity both a herald of the heat of summer and a farewell of sort, as it begins to make space for the monsoonal patterns that will soon flow through here daily. For now, though, it’s blue in all directions: to the four corners of the world, a flowering sky, opening like the first of the summer blossoms to hold us in a gentle embrace.
It reminded me this day of one of Wings’s simpler works, a piece from eleven or twelve years ago wrought in a classic form and vintage style. It was necklace: a small, spare pendant hung from silver snake chain, set with a Skystone exactly the color of the heavens on this day.
It’s been too many years now to know for sure, but I suspect that this piece began with the stone, the setting built around it. It was a very simple version of a classic cactus-blossom motif, one adapted for a central stone petaled by stampwork rather than petals formed of individual cabochons. First, though, came the background for the setting.
Wings always does his saw-work the same way he does his stampwork: freehand, the old way, with no lasers or power tools. He always files the edges smooth to prevent them catching on fabric or skin, but sometimes, he elects to leave a piece without the edges filed to a perfect straight line. It produces an older look, and there’s even a jewelry-market name for the approach: “vintage-style.” Artists use it when they want to evoke or pay homage to older, ancestral styles of silversmithing.
Wings cut this background setting into a geometric shape that the outside world consistently mislabels a “cross,” but there’s nothing cruciform about it. It’s a motif that represents the Four Sacred Directions, square or slightly rectangular with spokes extending to North, East, South, and West. It’s a symbol found among many of our peoples, and its meanings vary from culture to culture. It centers us, reminds us the powers that surround us and of the spirits who embrace us even as we go about our daily lives.
When he cut this piece out, however, he did not make it a perfect set of four spokes. Extending from the top spoke was a long tab, very slightly flared at the center, rising organically from the flat edge. This extension would form the bail, stamped in a directional arrow pattern pointing upwards, then eventually bent gently double to hold the chain.
First, though, would come the other stampwork and the stone. Wings fashioned a plain, low-profile round bezel and soldered it squarely in the center of the pendant. Then he chose a stamp in a small sunrise motif, rays rising in a crescent with the upper line of the arc in sharp relief. This he chased around the bezel, creating a dual image of sorts: one that evoked both a sunrise around a central sky, and the petals of a desert flower opening in the light.
Stampwork complete, he took a slender strand of twisted silver and soldered it carefully into place around the perimeter of the bezel. This would set off the focal stone without adding busy and extraneous imagery. At this point, he would have bent the bail carefully into place, then oxidized all of the stampwork and buffed it to a medium-high polish.
Final steps were the setting of the stone and stringing the pendant on sterling silver snake chain bound by sterling silver findings. The stone he chose was a perfectly plain round cabochon, fairly well-domed of Sleeping Beauty turquoise. The hallmark of Sleeping Beauty is its clear sky-blue color mostly unbroken by any matrix. This specimen, indeed, had none at all: like our world here today, nothing to mar the blue vault of the sky.
Despite the beauty of this place, the dangers that bedevil the outside world now do not leave us untouched. the best we can do is to limit our engagement with it, to isolate ourselves as much as possible and to interact responsibly with the rest of the world in only strictly limited ways. But it forces to reacquaint ourselves anew with the natural world that surrounds us, to honor and appreciate its singular beauty.
And today, despite the dangers beyond our boundaries, despite the pollen and haze and residual smoke, we have been granted the gift of a world of extraordinary beauty — and to the four corners of the world, a flowering sky.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
