Sometimes, what begins as a commission becomes instead a gift: a gift to the one who ordered it; a gift to the one to whom that person gives it; and a gift to Wings himself.
We are fortunate to have a regular clientele, one composed largely of people who are also dear friends. Some are, by now, like family to us. And some of them know us well enough, know Wings’s work well enough, that they are comfortable entrusting deeply personal commissions to his hands.
Today’s #ThrowbackThursday feature is one such work.
We don’t need to go back very far for this one — only two short months. It was a commission that was intended as a Christmas gift. It came from a very dear friend who is, for all practical purposes, much like a little sister to both of us. She is known for commissioning pieces for herself with nothing more than a type of jewelry and choice of stone for a guide: “a necklace with moonstone”; “a barrette with lapis.” Wings’s vision speaks to her, and she trusts him to know her well enough to design something that she will find both beautiful and symbolically significant for her personally.
Still, this one was different.
She wanted a Christmas gift for her mother, something very special. Both of her maternal grandparents had walked on some time ago, and she had been given her grandmother’s wedding ring. She thought perhaps it could be melted down and incorporated into a larger sterling silver piece to give to her mother. When I asked her whether she had any given type of jewelry in mind, and any particular motif, she mentioned that her grandfather had been known for his roses — world-class blooms that he cultivated carefully. She thought perhaps a pin in the shape of a rose, with the gold somehow incorporated into it, might symbolize not only both of her grandparents as individuals, but their union as a married couple.
I presented the idea to Wings, who was honored to be asked to create something so personally important to our friend and her family. He told me to assure her that he could come up with something suitable, and its creation would be his gift to her.
She sent the ring, a tiny, delicate little hoop of 14-karat gold.
And Wings set to work.
The fundamental difficulty lay in deciding how to create the rose: Should it be, as so much Native art is, merely a stylized nod in the general direction of a rose, by way of a vaguely floral shape? Should it strive for realism? Something between the two?
He ultimately settled on the the third option, hewing closer to the second than the first. The challenge then became designing a template that would fit the bill.
I pulled out a number of our photos of his own roses, and we chose one that seemed to fit the flower’s archetype. He began with a sketch that followed the general lines of that photo. He then searched for other images and incarnations of roses from various angles, cut out a few to use as inspiration, and began the laborious process of refining his sketches.
I should not here that this refining process does not occur in a vacuum: No matter how flawless a given sketch may be, if it’s not translatable into silver, it won’t work. And creating something three-dimensional from two-dimensional imagery, transforming photographic imagery into something made with metal that is necessarily confined to various forms, requires not only precision but an ability to use those forms, none of which, by itself, remotely resembles the model image, to coax the motif into flowering life. Silver in sheet form and flat strips known in the trade as “wire?” Neither of these was especially conducive the replicating his sketches.
It took work. Lots of it. Intensive labor, patience, dedication, and not a few appeals to Spirit by way of prayers sent aloft on cedar smoke.
And slowly, the rose bloomed.
He began with the basic flower itself, cutting the full setting from sheet silver with a jeweler’s saw, a solid backing flared into petals all around the edges. He added a tiny amount of minimalist stampwork to the petals to define their edges and overlapping points, but otherwise left that surface clear. Then he took a smaller flared layer of petals, domed them slightly from the reverse, and soldered them in an overlay to the base layer; this created the center ring of petals, and opened up to the center to hold the inner rings and the pistil.
The inner rings of petals were made from simple strips of silver, coiled in a tight spiral, to evoke the tightly-held rows that embrace stamen and pistil in a living flower, the petals that are last to open. Here. they have only begun to flower, opening just enough to display the pistil at the center, that point of pollination that keeps the rose a part of its own sacred hoop.
It was time to finish the pin’s basics, and so he added the pin assembly on the back, and soldered a stem onto its base. The stem was inspired: He began with a quick sketch of stem and leaves, but between cutting it out and soldering it to the bezel, he added texture to the leaves and thorns to the stem. Today, we have a visceral negative reaction to thorns, but it is they who protect the flower.
And so, most of the image intended to represent our friend’s grandfather was complete. However, it remained to add the the symbolism representing her grandmother, the piece that began this whole process from a conceptual standpoint.
Wings took the wedding ring, carefully melted it down, and formed all of the molten gold into a tiny ingot sphere. Once cooled, he added a single stamp in its center, a star-like image edged with rays, to create a semi-realistic facsimile if a pistil’s center (and, symbolically, to evoke imagery of light and life). He gave the bit of gold ingot a Florentine finish, so that it would not appear too brassy, then carefully soldered it into place at the very center of the rose. Finally, he gave the pin as a whole a high-gloss buffing, which allowed the petals to catch and refract the light beautifully.
The result was a work of weight and substance, in terms both very literal and utterly symbolic. The sheer amount of sterling silver guaranteed that it would need to be worn on substantial fabrics: sweaters, jackets, coats, even hats. Between the value of the metals (and the value of the gold is substantial) and the labor involved, a piece like this, were he to make one simply for sale in the gallery, would retail for about $2,500.
But in this instance, it was a piece beyond price: a flowering ancestral spirit that embodied the memory of our friend’s beloved grandparents, given as a gift to her equally beloved mother . . . and a gift to Wings (and tangentially, to me) in the honor of such trust placed with us.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
