It’s a glorious day, the first day in a very long while that has really felt like spring.
At dawn, a single band of coral-tinted clouds, already breaking apart, arced across the northern sky; within a couple of hours, all that remained was an almost mirror-image band to the west, and a couple of hours after that, the sky had transformed itself into a vast unbroken blue, not a single trace of white anywhere.
Now, at midday, a few puffs of white are rising here and there from behind the peaks, but they hold no threat of rain or snow, and if we are lucky, the current brisk breeze will remain so: nothing strong enough to blow the clouds apart, never mind wreak its preferred forms of havoc here on the land.
Yesterday, just before noon, it was cold enough to snow one last time. Now, only one day on, the promise of summer’s warming fire seems about to be realized.
It’s not, of course; not yet. The extended forecast shows highs that will hover around seventy for the next half-month, but there will be precious little warmth to the air on those days when the winds are present, and there are plenty of those yet to come. But perhaps it will be just enough for the strands of pollen to give way to aspen leaves, for the buds on the pear tree to become a profusion of white blossoms, for the lilacs to bloom in the beauty of their short-lived purple haze.
And perhaps, just occasionally, markers of the monsoon season’s early return, the kind of weather that relieves the heat with brief repeated cloudbursts, and after the rain, ends the day with a post-storm fire in the sunset sky.
Today’s featured work embodies exactly those dynamics, and the season they call home. It’s a pair of earrings, exceptionally long, capable of dancing, and set with a matched pair of extraordinary cabochons that look like our small world here in those moments of summer twilight. From their description in the Earrings Gallery here on the site:
After the Rain Earrings
The high desert’s monsoon season is one of starkly beautiful landscapes, and after the rain, the sunset sets the sky aflame against a still-gray earth. Wings summons the spirits of storm and sunset simultaneously in these dangling drop earrings, each a long, elegant cascade of landscape jasper set into bezels backed with a feathery pattern as ethereal as the post-storm light. The cabochons are a matched pair, domed at the top and beveled at the corners, warm earthy bands of sand and burgundy and ivory at the top above a land still gray with storm and wind below. Each is set into a hand-filed, low-profile bezel trimmed with twisted silver and hung from sterling silver wires via hand-made jump rings; the back of each setting is hand-milled in a graceful feathered pattern, raised in a silky textured relief. Earrings hang 2.25″ in total length (excluding wires) by 5/8″ across; cabochons are 2″ long by .5″ across (dimensions approximate). [Note: These are large stones, requiring a significant amount of silver; the earrings are substantial, and should be worn by someone accustomed to wearing earrings with a bit of weight.] Front shown at top, reverse immediately above, and both at the link.
Sterling silver; landscape jasper
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
I chose to show the back of the earrings here to highlight the hand-rolled millwork that forms the backing of each bezel: down feathers, like those closest to a raptor’s body — here, perhaps, those of Thunderbird, dancing in the winds his wings create, celebrating the gifts just bestowed upon a hot and thirsty earth.
The stones are something else entirely, a gift of the earth and a manifestation of beauty and power unto themselves. Cut from the same specimen and clearly matched, these examples of landscape jasper are extraordinary for their banding and color and for something that would mean little elsewhere: A near-perfect representation of earth and sky here after the rain, the post-storm fire of the summer twilight. A land grayed with clouds, perhaps dust, eventually the long sunset shadows, and perhaps a few wisps of cloud or fog clinging to its surface, with a sky aflame in shades of peach and coral and mulberry and plum, bands of blazing color whose glow herald the fall of dark.
This is the promise of summers warming fire, every bit as much as the heat of ambient air temperature or the occasional actual ignition by lighting strike (on a day this beautiful, we’ll shelve discussions of the far more frequent ignitions by human negligence or malice).
Because on a day like this, after a long, hard winter and an even harder spring, it’s finally possible to believe that it’s a promise about to be fulfilled.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2023; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
