October skies are spiderweb skies, near every bit as much as they are skies of extraordinary clarity and light.
This is a threshold season, much unsettled by late storms and early squalls even in ordinary times; now, with climate change, our days are predictable only in their unpredictability. Today was a perfect example, beginning beneath a webbed veil of clouds, backlit by coral and rose and silvery light that eventually transcended the violet banks around the horizon. By midday, the thunder rolled in the face of a present sun, eventually visiting a brief downpour upon the land, ten minutes of heavy rain and hail. Now the sun has returned, but behind him the clouds close ranks and marshal their forces, intending to deliver more rain in the days to come.
Our small world here is caught in the web of autumn, held fast, but instead of a predator’s lair it is the protection of elemental spirits. The web of the world is the spirits’ embrace, and we are kept safe within it.
Two days ago, Wings completed his newest work, one perfect for such a powerfully unsettled and unsettling time: a piece that pays tribute to the protection of earth and water, the power of storm and light. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
The Web of the World Cuff Bracelet
The web of the world is the spirits’ embrace, an elemental cradle of earth and water, storm and light. Wings pays tribute to its nurturing power and animating force with his newest cuff bracelet wrought in the avatars of those elemental beings. It begins with a sterling silver cuff, sparingly hand stamped in traditional patterns representing the winds and the vortex and the sacred directions. The chased symbols cascade down the length of the band beneath paired Eyes of Spirit, cut freehand, ajouré-fashion, and edged with rays of illuminating light. At thetop of the band, the focal stone is flanked by pairs of malachite ovals, bold banded emerald green cabochons in the color of the earth, set into saw-toothed bezels. And at the center rests a jewel of water and sky, a luminous and elegantly outsized freeform cabochon of ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain turquoise from China’s Hubei District, deep teal blue and crisscrossed with a web as tight and perfect as any constructed by Grandmother Spider, this one inky black backlit by hints of warm rusty red glowing through its filaments. All four cabochons are bezel-set onto a single backing, elevated slightly off the top of the band to protect the integrity of both the stones’ settings and the band’s arc. The band is 1.25″ across, with each ajouré Eye extending .75″ across; the malachite cabochons are 3/8″ long by 5/16″ across at the widest point; and the center cabochon is 1.5″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest point (dimensions approximate). Other view shown above and below.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Cloud Mountain (Hubei, China) turquoise; malachite
$1,875 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is one of Wings’s most powerful pieces in his recent body of work, one that honors the spirits of both our cosmos and our more indigenous cosmologies. It harnesses the power of the storm, and of the light, and weds them to their less volatile counterparts, earth and sky. It does so within the cradle of the winds and the Sacred Directions, the signs of the storm and the Eyes of Spirit.
It’s a piece wrought of wisdom and vision, of the power of this world and that of dreams beyond our conscious reach . . . and a reminder that even in the face of such awe-inspiring power, we are protected, nurtured, given life within the world’s embrace and the spirits who animate it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2017; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
