This day has dawned cold, but not precisely clear; bands of slate-blue clouds have turned the sky to agate. There is no real chance of any snow forecast now, but we welcome the the clouds for the possibility they hold all the same.
For the moment, the southeast is sky is lit with white fire, the northwest, enshawled in the icy blue of a distant winter storm. It reminds us that the two are not merely opposites, but also one, in that contradictory way that elemental powers embody each other as part of themselves, with no dissonance, no fragmentation or disintegration of their essential selves.
It is winter once more, and winter is the season when fire and ice are one.
And so it’s a fitting moment for this week’s featured throwback work, one that dates back almost nine full years, to March of 2012. It was part of a special commission of three nearly identical works by one of our dearest friends. Those of you who have followed a particular recent cable series (or, prior to that, the books on which it was based) will no doubt recognize it for what it is. The commission consisted of three pins in one specific form and shape: a direwolf, wrought in the classic style of the books but infused with just a hint of an Indigenous spirit, intended as gifts for each of three young women hard at work on and in the series. Each was to have a single gemstone cabochon as an eye; our friend’s preferences were for two amethyst and one moonstone. Once she had given Wings the specifications, he set to work.
For those who know, the specific direwolf imagery is iconic, sharing an artistic style with other symbols and sigils from the stories. The challenge was to be faithful to that very particular style without copying it, while still adding the undercurrent of Indigeneity to the design that our friend wanted. Wings began by having me pull examples of the original artwork (and our friend was originally a part of that creative process) so that he could get a feel for the spirit of the design. After studying the detail work, he then began sketching a version that was faithful to the original without being a direct copy. He began with the head and the lines of the body, choosing an animated, running shape for it, on the theory that this would both be true to the ancient animal’s long, lean, real-life lines and would also make clearer exactly what it was supposed to be. The latter point was important, because Coyote assumes in outsized role in the “Native art market” iconography of this region, and it would be very easy for those who don’t know the imagery to mistake an average, vaguely canine-looking form for Coyote instead of recognizing it as the ancient spiritual ancestor of Wolf that it is. [I say “spiritual ancestor,” because research only this week has shown that to find a common ancestor between the modern wolf and the direwolf requires a regression of some five million years; oddly, I had already chosen this piece to feature in this week’s #ThrowbackThursday post before news of the research broke, which seemed to me in some strange way to confirm that it was the one I was supposed to use today.]
Of course, the sigil this piece represents was intended for a [fictional] house in a land of snow and ice, yet involved characters whose lives would be inextricably intertwined with those whose iconography was fire. To me, the original artwork on which our friend asked Wings to base it has always reminded me of fire, each sigil formed in part of flowing lines that met in sharp points, like the basic symbology of flames. And it was here that Wings chose to put an Indigenous imprimatur on an ancient indigenous spirit [yes, direwolves were indigenous to this land some of our peoples call Turtle Island, too].
First, though, came the part of the process with the greatest degree of difficulty: the cut-work.
The small animated spirit shown here, one that was probably not much, if any, over two inches in total length, from tips of nose to tail, was cut entirely freehand using a tiny jeweler’s saw with an incredibly fine blade. Hard enough was the ruffled fur, a whole long series of slightly arched points flaring out from the back and underside of the creature’s body and tail. But look at the fine linework around the legs and paws, between the bent foreleg and and the chest, around the muzzle and beneath the chin: It’s an impossibly small series of divots and curves and switchbacks, and Wings cuts such pieces all in one go, always moving forward all the way around it, never retracing or stopping and starting. It was a phenomenal amount of cutwork, by any definition, and all done freehand.
Once the saw-work was complete and the edges filed as smooth as possible on a piece so finely, sharply delineated, who turned to the stampwork. A single sharp arc defined the muscled thigh of the outer hind leg; a stylized Morning Star consisting of a hoop and four slender triangular spokes separated the bent outer foreleg from the forward stretch of the one next to it. Tiny crescents, like little moons, texturized each leg further. And the unmistakable design of the direwolf’s fur, ruffled and blowing in the wind as it ran, was achieved with a single stamp in a traditional Indigenous motif: a small, sharply pointed triangle with an open base, used most often to represent weaponry in the form of arrowheads. These he placed along each pointed edge of the top and bottom lines of body and tail, following the points of the fur. Then, working backward from the neck and moving to the end of the tail, he placed repeating rows of these arrowhead symbols in slightly randomized patterns to create the effect of the great creature’s full fur. Dotted chisel-lines at the end of the body and more open triangles with a broader base linked chest to hindquarters, and he brought the open motif to a close on the sleeker tail with a stamp designed ordinarily to represent elk or deer tracks.
Once the stampwork was complete, Wings turned it over, doming it ever so slightly to add shape and depth, then adding his hallmark and soldering the pin assembly securely to the reverse. Then he turned it right side up again and turned his attention to the face. Knowing that he would be adding a cabochon for the eye, he elected to leave the face itself smooth and sleek, an elegant contrast to the rich texture of the body. He fashioned one tony round bezel above the muzzle and below the ear and browbone, a small saw-toothed embrasure that would hold the stone fast. Then he oxidized the piece fully, paying particular attention to the stampwork, and buffed it to a medium polish just a few shades off Florentine. It glowed like white fire.
All that remained was to set the stone, bless it, and send it on its way. Since amethyst and moonstone were the cabochons of choice for this small set, he had set aside a particularly pure, icy round moonstone for this particular pin. It was chatoyant, the banding clear and the surface refractive in shades of white and silver and pewter, like a tiny orb of ice set into a body made of fire and flame.
The result was spectacular: instantly recognizeable, yet wholly unique for the wearer.
And on this day when the weather is clear but the clouds loom low and close, it reminds me that this season of rebirth is also the season of the wolf, and therefore to be approached and engaged with humility and respect. This is winter at the end of The Dragon’s Tail, the season when fire and ice are one.
~ Aji
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