Today dawned cold and flawlessly clear, the sunrise sky a perfect gradient: palest peach in the east, a dusky cornflower blue in the west, the two colors blending seamlessly together overhead. The clarity combined with what has become a rare stillness, allowing air earth to warm rapidly.
But it was not to last.
This morning required multiple errands of us, and just as we were leaving the last of them to come home, the wind began to rise. Arriving home, there was still not a cloud in the sky save one tiny patch of iridescent white to the south. And within half an hour, stormclouds the color of slate had formed a wall to the north/northwest.
With the gathering clouds came the winds revival, and it has been ferocious: high-velocity, driving hard straight out of the north, brutally cold, its fangs sinking bone-deep in a matter of seconds. Even bundled up in my heaviest coat and hood, it leeched all the warmth from my body as I went about evening chores, and I could not be happier to be inside by the fire now.
There is an odd feel to such days here; the cold is normal, but the way in which it chooses to manifest is not. Given the state of our dying climate, and the spiritual transgressions of the forces newly in authority now, it’s perhaps no surprise that our wounded earth is reacting in unexpected ways, but it’s making for a bone-chilling, spirit-crushing existence.
And the world has no time for us to give in to either one.
In a world now caught in this deep and deadly cold, literally and metaphorically alike, we look to the winter sun’s fire and light to warm us. It’s a measure of that star’s power that even in its limited hours with us, with its still greater distance and low-angled light, it still holds medicine enough to keep our world alive. It’s one of the great gifts found in all the shades of the sun, this light that gives our world life and breath and being.
And it’s a gathering of gifts captured in silver and stone in today’s featured masterwork. It’s a necklace, but that’s a term that seems wholly inadequate as a descriptor; it’s a marvel of artistry, a phenomenon of Mother Earth’s own creative processes, and of those wrought by Wings’s own hands. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
All the Shades of the Sun Necklace
One day beneath an alpine desert sky shows us all the shades of the sun, and all of the medicine of its warmth and light. With this necklace, Wings summons the fiery amber glow of the sunrise and the banded sunset flames to dance with the luminous shimmer that filters through the midday storm. The pendant, cut freehand of solid sterling silver, is built around three spectacular cabochons: at top, an elongated trapezoidal specimen of beautifully marbled Indonesian Maligano jasper, sunny shades of gold and peached veined with the slate blue-gray of trailing stormclouds; bookended below, the golden glow of dawn captured in an oval of agatized amber, and all the fires of the dusk in a bloodstone ellipse, beautifully banded in a gradient of dusty rose and ivory, teal and crimson. All three cabochons are set into scalloped bezels atop a single organic backing, framed on their extended edges by freehand stampwork in a raidant motif. The beads in the strand were all hand-selected to pick up the colors in the cabochons, from rounds of slate gray moonstone banded with peach inclusions to sunstone, gray-white moonstone, cloud jasper, and fire agate, punctuated by giant old amber rondels, faceted Indonesian silver barrels, and freeform nuggets of golden and cherry amber, anchored at either end by alternating rounds of fire agate and bloodstone followed by dusky teal Kambaba jasper. Bead strand is 22″ long, excluding findings; pendant including bail is 3-1/2″ long; pendant alone is 3″ long by 1-5/8″ across at the widest point; bail is 1/2″ long by 1/2″ across at the widest point; Maligano jasper cabochon is 1-3/8″ long by 15/16″ across at the widest point; amber cabochon is 15/16″ long by 5/8″ across; bloodstone cabochon is 1-3/16″ long by 9/16″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Pendant: Sterling silver; Maligano jasper; agatized amber; bloodstone
Strand: Tri-ply foxtail plated with silver; sterling silver findings
Beads: Gray moonstone with peach inclusions; old amber; sunstone; Indonesian silver; moonstone; cloud jasper
fire agate; amber; cherry amber; black moonstone; bloodstone; Kambaba jasper
$2,000 + shipping, handling, and insurance
This is an extraordinary work. As I always feel bound to admit, when Wings fist pulled these three cabochons together in combination? I couldn’t really see it. The disparity between the stones was so great that I could not imagine them together — neither proportionally, in size and shape, nor thematically, in color and pattern.
And then he set the stones.
It works beautifully. The proportions are perfect; the difference in the stones’ colors and patterns becomes not a clash but a complementary contrast in shades and textures. The Maligano jasper cabochon is as fine an example as I’ve ever seen, that beautifully beveled shield cut showing off the gradients of peach and blue-gray and silver to glorious effect, like a dawn sky marbled with the clouds of a gathering storm. The agatized Dominican amber oval is pure sun, clear and bright and with flawless mirror-image banding. The bloodstone jasper gives us all the colors of the fiery sunset sky, much like the deep reds and dusky rose and hints of green in the background blue that we witnessed here tonight. The flanged compound bezels that hold them all set them off in gorgeous form, too: just enough silver edging to make the stones pop, nothing to overwhelm or distract from their beauty.
The bail is hand-milled in a diagonal pattern given a velvety Florentine finish. It’s the perfect channel to hold this particular strand of beads, each one hand-selected to pick up the shades and spirits of the focal stones.
It’s like wearing a strand made of sun, wrapped here and there in a filmy veil of soft gray-white cloud.
And it reminds us that there is no day too cold, no circumstance too dark to prevent the sun from doing its work.
Some of our peoples make it a practice, especially in winter, to sing and pray Father Sun across the sky each day — a recognition that the work is necessarily harder, with fewer available hours in which to do it. And somehow, it all gets done, always.
We are the beneficiaries of powerful blessings now, of great gifts of medicine in the winter sun’s fire and light. In these dark times, it becomes our task to let this example inspire us to do likewise, to do our parts daily to make this a world of breath and light, warmth and life for all.
We cannot allow them to be extinguished now.
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2025; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
