At long last, our world is back on what passes for “normal time.”
We were both up before the sun had gained the ridgeline, and after a passingly decent night’s sleep, too, as though knowing that the shift away from a thoroughly colonial and utterly capitalist reckoning of our days is over for another half-year was enough to induce rest at last.
Of course, I never sleep through the night anymore without awakening at least a few times, but that in itself is no bad thing, especially at this time of year: Now, rising in the middle of the clear cold autumn nights permits me a view of the stars just outside the window, with the Big Dipper tilted just above the northerly peaks.
There is little so breathtaking as the clear night skies of this cold season, or the radiant beauty of the dawn to follow.
We are fortunate, living where we do: We sit in the embrace of ridgelines to highlight the rising sun and a high distant horizon to drawn it down at dusk; sit, too, beneath the bridge between the worlds, what the rest of the world knows as the Milky Way, which arcs directly above and across our home at this season. We live in the shelter of the stars and the sacred directions, awed day and night by the wonder of autumn skies.
Today’s featured work embodies these otherworldly gifts in beautifully classic fashion, even down to its very identity and name. From its description in the Necklaces Gallery here on the site:
The Stars and the Sacred Directions Necklace
Wisdom rests within the embrace of the stars and the sacred directions. Wings summons them both to the center of the sky in this revival of one of his older styles, a traditional Southwest-style cross cut freehand and wrought in heavy fourteen-gauge sterling silver. In echoes of older works, he extends the upper spoke of the cross into a secondary bail, creating an image that is less cruciform, more evocative of the Four Sacred Directions. The spokes are scored and stamped entirely freehand in a design that evokes a Northern-style star. A second star is nested at the center around a single square cabochon of natural blue-green spiderwebbed turquoise beautifully marbled with an inky matrix, an eight-pointed star whose points each form one-half of an Eye of Spirit, itself a sign of wisdom, illumination, and guidance. One the reverse, he echoes the motif of stars pointing to the Sacred Directions with mariner’s stars stamped freehand around his hallmark at the cardinal points. The pendant hangs from a hand-made bail, through which is threaded sterling silver snake chain. Pendant including bail hangs 3″ long, without bail, 2-5/8″ long; bail is 9/16″ long; cross is 1-3/4″ across at the widest point; turquoise cabochon is just over 3/8″ square; chain is 18″ long, excluding findings (all dimensions approximate). Close-up views shown below.
Sterling silver; blue-green spiderweb turquoise
$1,500 + shipping, handling, and insurance
And Wings continued the theme of the stars’ guiding embrace with his hallmark on the reverse, placing it squarely at the center of four eight-pointed stars — celestial guiding lights to us even as they symbolize the spokes fo the mariner’s compass to the colonial world, representing navigation and direction to all.
This is one of Wings’s old designs, revived recently here. Other than a couple of special commissions, this is, as I recall, only the second or third cross that he has created in some sixteen years (the last point at which, if memory serves, he produced one in this sort of pattern). But one feature has remained consistent through all of them, commissions and otherwise: his reluctance to relegate the work to the bloody associations of a cruciform shape, preferring instead to use his work to honor the beauty and power of the sacred directions.
But, you say, it looks like a cross. Yes, it does . . . and yet, it differs. A cruciform shape requires that the bottom spoke be much longer than the top, necessary to align with the shape of a human body for purposes of hanging. This one features a top spoke that is nominally shorter . . . until you factor in the twinned bails, one organic, extending directly from the piece itself, the other added as a single simple vertical link. Combined, they add enough length to the top of the cross to make the quantity of silver beneath the chain and above the center roughly equal in length to the lower spoke.
And thus, it becomes a tribute not to death, but to life: to the stars that shelter us at night and the sacred directions that hold our world on its axis and us securely in their embrace. The mysteriously whorled and beveled square of deep teal-blue turquoise at its center, a dusky indigo aswirl with stormclouds and encroaching night, likewise embodies all the wonder of autumn skies in this place: haunting, powerful, and yet healing, too.
It’s a reminder that place and time are gifts, too, and it is our obligation to honor them and be grateful.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
