Dawn this day was a pale affair, hints of peach tinging the clouds in their fast retreat between the peaks. It’s a day of sun and immoderate warmth, even despite the breeze’s blade-like edge.
Even the chickens have ventured out far beyond the gate to their barn-sized coop, willing to brave the unmelted snow for the chance of finding treasure in the mud.
Where the chickens are concerned, we found our own version of treasure yesterday: atop the bales in the highest corner of the hay barn, in an erstwhile nest solitary brown egg. Of course, it’s not really brown, merely a muted, less radiant version of the same peach as the clouds at sunrise. But it is the first egg of the year, three months too soon, but their internal incubators are as confused by climate change as the rest of us.
Now, at midday, the earth is warming in the sun, the ploughed stretches of earth already turned again to mud, those still buried beneath snow and ice ashimmer in the light. Our wintry world still sits at sharp angles to the sun, but it is alive with the sparks of a radiant spirit, open to the arrival of a brighter light and warmer winds.
Today’s featured work embodies not merely the spirit, this source of heat and light, but also the relation between it and our earth. From its description in the Rings Gallery here on the site:
The Square of the Sun Ring
The sun is no more square than the stone, but both make it possible to believe in a world with four corners. Wings summons angles at the square of the sun and the spirit of this ancient light in this ring, a sharply angular, yet high-domed rectangle of blood-red carnelian set upon a band of hammered silver light. The band is cut freehand in his signature scalloped design, then hammered by hand to give it a shimmering vintage look and feel. The carnelian cabochon, glossy and slightly translucent, hints at hidden depths as it rests securely in a scalloped bezel. The band is 1/2″ wide at the widest point and 5/16″ across at the narrowest point; the stone is 3/4″ long by 1/2″ wide (dimensions approximate). Sizeable. Other views shown above and at the link.
Sterling silver; carnelian
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
At this moment, the light seems more the hammered silver of the ring’s wide and graceful band than the fire of its focal stone. It finds a target in the weeping willows, their branches pure gold against blue sky and snow. But this evening will transform the heavens into an expanse of flame, coral and copper and crimson all vying for primacy of place in the western sky even as they cast their glow upon the small trailing clouds that have wended and wound around the eastern peaks.
In this unsettled time and season, as winter and spring too soon contend, there is little that is sure save earth and sky, warmed and illuminated by the sparks of a radiant spirit.
~ Aji
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