After yesterday’s clouds and the constant, tantalizing threat of rain that never materialized, our world today returns to the clear turquoise blue of illuminating skies. The air itself has no such perfect clarity — too much pollen and dust and drifting wood smoke — but the skies are cloudless and already bleaching themselves in the hot glow of the sun.
This is the best of summer here, before the heat becomes unmanageable and the chill returns with the monsoons: bright and breezy, clear and, later on when the sun has had a chance to heat earth and air, just warm enough to be perfectly comfortable. Indeed, this is the first day this year that we have not had to build a morning fire in the main woodstove, although we may need a small one tonight.
Such a beautiful day feels like a gift with a purpose, one to hold in memory, to hang onto when the elements turn harsh and indulgent of their own extremes. It’s a reminder that there is illumination to be found in the natural world, wisdom, too, and when the rest of the world fails us as utterly as it is doing now, we can find solace, and even practical aid, in the world given to us by the spirits at the dawn of time.
For us, that has always been an essential truth, and in the face of global catastrophe, we are finding just how well it serves us now.
Today’s featured masterwork — and it is unquestionably that, all of Wings’s many decades of learning and practice, skill and talent coming together in one perfectly executed, harmonious whole — embodies both the gift of the heavens’ existence and the wisdom they hold, all the illuminating power of a clear turquoise sky in the lengthened light of summer’s birth. From its description in the Belts Gallery here on the site:
Illuminating Skies Butterfly Concha Belt
Butterflies are small but powerful spirits, visionary and prophetic, who wing their way to our world across illuminating skies. Wings summons the spirit of Butterfly and of the skies it inhabits, across this silver and turquoise cascade of this traditional concha belt. Wrought in an old and archetypal style, it features twelve separate classic conchas separated by thirteen old-style “butterfly” conchas, with a pair of the latter flanking the buckle at either end. Each classic concha is cut and scalloped around the edges, entirely freehand; lightly domed, repoussé-fashion; and meticulously hand-stamped in a highly detailed traditional design of concentric ovals that repeats across each piece. The stampwork begins with hand-scored lines radiating outward into small sunrise symbols, all chased in a clockwise fashion around the inner oval. The next oval is formed of a flowering pattern separated by tiny hoops — three upward-reaching petals of light flanking small perfect orbs on either side, forming the last line of stampwork on the gently sloping domed portion of the concha. Where the doming ends to flare into the scalloped edge, Wings has detailed it with labor-intensive chasing, tiny accent marks creating perfect definition along the flowing line of the oval. Outward from the chased line, a larger sunrise symbol rises toward the edge of each petal-like scallop. At the center of each oval concha rests a small round cabochon of spiderweb turquoise, set in a plain low-profile bezel, each stone a shade of robin’s-egg blue matrixed with tiny coppery and inky blue-black lines, some with translucent wisps of spring green floating over the surface. The butterfly conchas are hand-stamped in a traditional flaring design, wings at top and bottom, their entire pleated surfaces domed, repoussé-fashion, to give them a three-dimensional appearance. The buckle is hand-scored inward from the edge to create a narrow border; inside the border, the center is hand-hammered with scores, perhaps hundreds, of tiny separate strikes of the jeweler’s hammer, then hand-scored outward from the center in a radiant motif. Along the outer border, tiny lodge symbols against a radiant sun repeat along all four sides, with slightly larger lodge symbols sitting solitary at each corner. At the buckle’s center rests an oval cabochon of beautiful robin’s-egg blue turquoise, probably from the Montezuma District, with a beautifully abstract matrix in bold coppery-red spiderwebbing. The belt itself is heavy brown-black leather, hand-cut, hand-split, hand-beveled along the edges, and hand-stamped down its entire length in a radiant sun motif. The belt is finished off with brown-black braided leather figure-eight ties that terminate in sterling silver tips with tiny globe-like ends. The belt is 52″ long and the leather strip is 11/16″ wide; the oval conchas are 2-1/16″ long by 1-7/8 inches high; the round center cabochons are 7/16″ across; the butterfly conchas are 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point; the buckle is 2-5/16″ long by 1-3/4″ high; the oval center cabochon is 1″ long by 5/8″ high; the silver tips on the ties are 1-7/8″ long; the ties themselves are 7″ long (all dimensions approximate). Close-up views shown below.
Sterling silver; spiderwebbed blue turquoise (most likely from the Royston and Montezuma Districts)
$7,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Notes: Requires special handling; extra shipping charges apply.
The leather belt is a standard length; a hand-made belt in a specialty size may be ordered
(either shorter or longer) for an additional $325 charge.
The buckle on this belt is pure radiance: It shimmers even in artificial light, but out of doors, beneath the sun? It positively glows.
The conchas, too, radiate beauty and power, their seemingly impossibly uniform stampwork reminding us that the whole world flowers in the light.
Despite the longer light of these late spring days, the outside world now seems very dark indeed. It’s not only the kind of dark that conceals dangers, although there are plenty of those; it’s a darkness born of willful ignorance, of a desire to be as cruel and petty as humanly possible.
It’s the darkness of evil, a living, breathing thing, an animated and animating spirit that infects everything it touches far more thoroughly than any novel coronavirus could ever hope to do.
But just two days ago, as we were out with the horse vet, working with the horses, the first western tiger swallowtail butterfly of the season danced past, a flash of gentle yellow striped in black and touched at the wingtips with the cornflower blue of a midday sky. The bees are here already, hard at their assigned task of pollination. The wild birds come and go, the smallest ones feeding now off the lilac and honeysuckle. The earth is rich, the air clear, the land lush and green — all not merely surviving but thriving beneath the illuminating power of a clear turquoise sky.
We can do the same.
~ 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.
