Some days are harder than others.
It’s a beautiful day here, bright and clear and warm at last, only a slight breeze to move the air and plenty of birds taking advantage of it.
And the news from all quarters is unrelievedly grim, filled with tragedy and obscenity and absolute criminality, news of death and destruction and unending grief. Our own ways give more solace than those of colonialism, and yet the latter is what governs now, and solace of any sort seems further away than ever.
In such times, Wings returns to his work with the land. It’s not simply that it’s healing, although it is that. But it’s a matter of returning to roots, of feeling oneself tangibly linked with The Eternal. There was a time when I would have done likewise, but physical limitations bar me from most of my former out-of-doors work now. But the real world, as we tend to regard it, still presents opportunities even for me, in the form of the wild creatures, the sun and air, the prospect of planting next week or the following one, depending upon temperature and weather.
It is very nearly summer, after all: the season of a flowering hoop of fire.
Yes, that last has been with us in far too literal terms in recent weeks, and we are by now much more than weary of it. But in a more metaphorical sense, we are just coming into the weeks when the landscape sets itself ablaze: a riot of Indian paintbrush and prickly pair blossoms and, yes, firewheels too. The rd petals will, of course, be interspersed with the gold of dandelions of black-eyed Susans and Mexican hats, the blues and pinks of cornflower, the purples of sage and lilac and catmint. But in the early weeks of June, it is the fire shades that show themselves most fully, and they remind me that in ways tangible and less so, fire is essential to the land’s survival, and to our own.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday work embodies the flowers, the fire, and the hoop in perfectly apt form. It’s a work that’s close to my own heart: It’s one of the seven bangles that Wings created for my birthday not quite three years ago, a set of seven silver hoops, each set with seven stones. The number has deeply personal significance, obviously, but apart from the spiritual meaning the collection has for me, it’s an extraordinary group of works in its own right. I’ve featured the other six, individually, here at various times over the last couple of years; this is the final bracelet in the set.
Wings created each slender hoop of sterling silver wire: half-round, bead, pattern. For a couple of them, he used the pattern wire you see here, wider than the others and molded in a flowing Art Nouveau pattern reminiscent of the work of Alphonse Mucha. The flowers remind me of a mix of poppies and lilies, both of which have species indigenous to this place, and both of which are among my personal favorites (Wings knows that if he wants to get me flowers and there are too many choices, lilies are always a safe bet).
First, he cut the wire to the proper length. With bangles, it must be much larger than with a cuff; leaving aside the fact that a properly sized cuff leaves and inch or more of open space on the underside for adjustment, a bangle must fit over not merely one’s wrist but one’s fist. Beyond that, the thickness of the silver, whatever it happens to be, affects the ultimate size. If, say the size around one’s fist is nine inches, the silver needs to be cut a quarter- to a half-inch longer. Why? Because the measurement must apply to the inside of the bangle, and its thickness, combined with some overlap when it’s soldered together, will shorten it somewhat.
Once sized, Wings shaped the silver gently, using a mallet and mandrel, and then placed the hoop in a small jeweler’s vise. it sits atop his workbench, and permits him to solder and otherwise work with a piece that cannot stay balanced upright and perfectly still on its own. After soldering it securely and seamlessly, he turned his attention to the stones.
These are natural coral cabochons, very small, and so he needed to fashion equally tiny bezels for them. He kept them plain, low-profile with no scalloping or serrating of the edges, and he soldered them into place atop the bangles surface at intervals, cooling and curing it after each bezel’s placement before resetting it in the vise at a turn to fashion the next one. When that process was complete, he oxidized all the joins and the raised pattern of the bangle itself, then buffed it to a gentle Florentine finish. With the aged appearance of the pattern in long, graceful loops and lines and whorls, it gave the entire bracelet a subtle effect of flowing movement.
All that remained was to set the stones, bless it, and turn to the next in the series (I believe this was the third or so in the creative process for the entire collection). The group consists of a mix of types of gems, some opaque, some translucent, but the coral glows like a flowering hoop of fire.
Perhaps by next week, the land will, too.
~ Aji
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