Today is, for me, a perfect October day. It dawned sunny and bright, the electric blue studded with clouds around the horizon: the storm at the edge of the sky, not due, per the forecast, to arrive until tomorrow, but already making incursions a day early.
Now, at midday, the sky is almost all clouds, only a few faint portals showing through to the blue behind them. The mercury is dropping instead of rising, and it feels as tough the light snow mixed with rain predicted for tomorrow might deliver a few flurries yet today.
Regardless of when it appears, it will be welcome — indeed, by now, the sense of anticipation is nearly intolerable. The prospect of precipitation for a land so long denied it is more than a gift, a blessing; it’s medicine.
At this moment, earth and sky seem wholly autumnal, and in these days leading up to month’s end, haunting to no small degree. Skeletal branches, remnant gold and crimson leaves still clinging stubbornly, seem to be reaching for an eerie and darkening sky. There is an almost otherworldly quality to the colors now, and this is the light that heralds the gathering storm — haunting and haunted, and yet simultaneously full of life itself.
But it is the light, and the sky, of the early hours of this day that finds expression in today’s featured work. It’s one of Wings’s newest, completed earlier this week, and built around an extraordinary old Skystone as its focal. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Storm At the Edge of the Sky Ring
As thunderheads build at the horizon, we keep our eye on the storm at the edge of the sky: a phenomenon as capable of destruction as it is of powerful healing. With this ring built around an extraordinary old freeform Skystone, Wings evokes this medicine in all its intensely blue beauty and power. The focal stone is a not-quite-perfect oval of very old natural turquoise (long believed to be old Morenci) from his personal collection, gorgeous high-desert sky blue with a rolling surface textured by pits and patches of stormy black chert ashimmer with iron pyrite. It rests in a beautifully fitted bezel wrought entirely by hand, each section saw-cut by hand in perfect parallel to the next. The whole sits atop a classically wide band of heavy-gauge sterling silver, stamped in paired old-style radiant-sun motifs down its center and edged in cloud-like crescents along either border. This ring is created to larger standards, from ring size to width to weight. Nine-gauge band is 3/8″ wide; cabochon is 3/4″ high by 5/8″ wide at the widest point; band is currently sized at roughly 13.5 (all dimensions approximate). Sizeable*. Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; very old natural freeform American turquoise, believed to be old Morenci
$875 + shipping, handling, and insurance
* Because of the nature of the band design, there is a $25 charge for resizing
It is the patches of chert and pyrite around the edges that give the ring its name, small dark clouds on the horizon that still shimmer with the light of the sun. But that light puts in an appearance on the band, as well:
The central stamp on the band’s underside is actually a compound motif, one stamp paired at its open ends. It’s radiant, half-circle crescents flanking the central symbol, one whose shape reminds me of an ulu. The three geometric shapes are surrounded by the rays of a rising sun, giving the appearance of clouds at dawn.
In other words, a typical October sunrise in this place.
The design repeats along the sides of the band, and the edges are bordered with small crescents — in another context, perhaps, a sign of the moon, but here, signifying the clouds that edge the sky at this season, whether at dawn, or, as now, herald the arrival of the season’s first real weather.
And then there’s the focal.
The bezel itself is a wonder, every parallel section saw-cut individually by Wings and the surfaces filed smooth. There is no flange on the backing, no twisted silver to edge it here; it’s not needed for a setting that holds such a powerful gift of the earth.
The stone is very old. It’s been part of his private collection for decades — so long, in fact, that he no longer recalls when or how he acquired it. It might have been among the supply of stones that his father, also a self-taught silversmith (as was his grandfather) passed on to him a very long time ago. Because of this, it’s impossible to identify its source beyond any doubt, but we’re confident in our assessment that it’s old Morenci turquoise. Were it a newer stone, I would say unusually bright Kingman, or perhaps more likely, Ithaca Peak; all three are Arizona mines, all known for sky-blue material and for chert and pyrite in the matrix. And such Morenci as appears on the market these days is mostly polished within an inch of its life — beautiful by any measure, but impossibly glossy and utterly lacking the rolling freeform surface for which old Morenci was so well known.
This is not that.
The surface is polished, but just — the rolling texture of the blue has been allowed to remain, as have the pitted divots of matrix material. In a way, it makes the contrast all the more stark: dark clouds lit from within by silver shimmer, placed directly against and within the electric blue of the alpine desert sky.
If this morning showed us only possibility of the storm at the edge of the sky, it now shows us plainly the light that heralds the gathering storm. The air is cold, the clouds are low and dark, and the sun shines silver through and between them now.
There is something on the way. We are holding out hope for snow.
~ Aji
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