The stone we highlighted in yesterday’s Jewels and Gems entry, with its black and brown inclusions in translucent host rock, captured my attention and recentered it on other gemstones featuring the color black (in whole or in part). I know that many people view this dark shade as entirely negative, associated with depression and gloom, with sin, with evil, with death. For us, it’s nothing of the sort.
For some of our peoples, black is the color of one of the sacred directions (which one, of course, varies by tradition). For others, it is part of the dress of the sacred clowns, whose job it is to trip the boundaries of cultural binaries and to point up the flaws and frailty therein. For still others, it is the color of Raven’s robes, one that once again encompasses other binaries, since for some he is Trickster, and for others, the Bringer of the Sun.
One of Wings’s favorite black stones is onyx, with its almost liquid depths and purity of hue. Over the years, he’s used it in all sorts of silverwork, from necklaces to belt buckles, but perhaps his most stunning have been the bracelets: narrow heavy-gauge cuffs with multiple small stones, a hammered anticlastic cuff with a single elevated medium-sized stone, large cuffs centered by even larger oval cabochons. Only one currently remains in inventory, one that was a part of his one-man show last year — the one featured in the image at the top of this post.
At that time, it was one in a multi-piece collection in miniature, one that fulfilled a specific role in the silverwork component of the show, a parallel to a similar theme in the photography component. In this case, that particular theme tended toward the feminine: images of sustenance, of nurturing, of the indigenous associations of the feminine with the waters, the moon, the night itself. That imagery is reflected in its description, found in the Bracelets Gallery:
Night Waters Cuff
Female spirits are often associated with sustenance — with bringing gifts of rain, and with it, fertility and abundance. The moon, the archetypal feminine symbol, likewise connects them to the powers and blessings of night. Here, a large liquid pool of onyx, a stone of earth and evening, rests atop a hand-scored silver cuff. Smaller pools of silver, hand-texturized with hundreds of tiny “ripples,” flank either side of the center cabochon.
Sterling silver; onyx
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
It is not, however, a “woman’s bracelet.” If anything, it’s one created in a style that, over the years, has appealed greatly to many of our male clients: a single large bold cabochon in an equally bold color, a solid scored band featuring little additional adornment. It is a piece that can only be described as substantial, in both senses of the term: in a tangible and material way, and in the symbolic sense.
In some modern [non-Native] traditions, onyx is seen as a stone of grounding, of planting one’s feet firmly on the earth and looking out at the world clear-eyed. Others associate it with healing the pain of grief and loss, or with bolstering one’s sense of courage. Much older traditions on the other side of the world held it sacred, a stone in the breastplate of Judaism’s first high priests, and a stone of great beauty, used in jewelry and ancient objets d’art.
Whatever its metaphorical and metaphysical significance, it’s symbolism that crosses gender lines as easily as it crosses cultural ones. And here in this place, where water is life, in this manifestation, in the waters of the night, it evokes the very powers of life itself.
~ 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.
