The storms of night can be the hardest to navigate; the dark is frightening, and makes it all the more difficult to see your way. It’s comforting to know that there are constants: That, whether you can see her face among the darkened clouds or not, Grandmother Moon dances around the Earth every twenty-eight days, whether the skies close enough for us to perceive are clear and starlit or a roiling mass of thunder and lightning.
Wings summoned this imagery, this sense of steadiness among the storms, in creating this vintage-style ring. Its face is made of ingot, the old way, melted and hammered into shape. It gives the face a solidity, a sense of substance, not found in ordinary sheet-silver bezels.
It’s a substance of the spirit, as well, harking back as it does to far older ways of smithing: ways practiced by Wings, by his father, by his grandfather. The focus was less on the fineries of superficial perfection than on the symbolism a piece was intended to convey, on the spirit whose powers it was meant to invoke.
The imagery here invokes powerful spirits.
Some regard the pinwheel pattern on its surface as the symbol for “rolling thunder,” but I suspect that’s more a dominant-culture label ripped from Hollywood-Native stereotypes and imposed entirely from without. It evokes a feeling of motion, true, with its curving spokes arranged in circle, appearing to turn in a clockwise pattern, but that very sense of motion and direction is what gives it its cyclical feel: the path of the sun, of the moon, of the passage of time itself in the cycle of life, what our peoples collectively call the sacred hoop.
Most often, these concepts are represented by the imagery of the sun, but its nighttime counterpart, the reflector of its light, embodies the same cycle, inhabits and performs the same orbital dance. It’s a gentler light, not so bright, yet always there, even when its face is but a crescent, or veiled entirely in shadow. It’s a spirit that finds expression here in today’s new work. From its description in the Rings Gallery:
Whirlwind Moon Ingot Ring
Grandmother Moon orbits the Earth in a cosmic whirlwind, a monthly clockwise dance around a celestial hoop. The tidal whirlpools of her magnetic pull are but a reflection of the vortex in the skies above. Find your footing in a spiraling world with this talismanic ring, created signet-style from sterling silver ingot. Its lightly polished face is solid, featuring a rolling, roiling storm of crescent moons dancing in a hoop around its surface. Each lunar bow is stamped individually by hand, as are the coronal lines that edge it, giving its shape a slightly fluted effect. The band is a single smooth length of solid silver with a Florentine finish. Ingot top is one inch across; band is .25 inch wide (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. View of band shown below.
Sterling silver
$275 + shipping, handling, and insurance
SOLD
It does look very like a signet ring, and the stampwork is bold enough that it could, I suppose, be used as a seal. It certainly evokes a vintage feel, created freehand, without the perfect symmetry of machining.
To me, it’s a lodestar of a different sort, a point on the compass, our Grandmother of the skies, by which we find direction and by which our path is lit when the heavens go dark. She moves in a dance as old as time, a whirling upon the twilight winds, along the complex yet constant steps of the night spiral.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
