At mid-morning, there was a single small cloud in the northeast sky. All the rest was blue; no clouds, no haze in sight.
And yet the forecast predicts rain and/or snow for tonight into tomorrow, with the possibility of such conditions continuing into Sunday.
Now, at midday, the air remains just as clear, but the blue expanse overhead is studded everywhere with bold trailing bands of white — not yet the sort of clouds that would produce any weather, but their precursors, the sort that will eventually coalesce into something far greater than the sum of their parts, blossoming into the beauty and medicine of a full-scale spring storm.
This is a flowering season: for the pear tree, first in full bloom this day; for the alpine dandelions and the tiny wildflowers that adorn the bindweed, already spreading across the earth; for the rain to come and for the snow’s last dance with this land that lives and thrives at an elevation seemingly high enough to touch the stars at night.
In practical terms, we are at the midpoint of spring, but summer is racing toward us rapidly now. and still winter is reluctant to release its grip entirely. That is not a bad thing here; the snow is a gift, and we will welcome its appearance. But we are now glad for summer’s proximity, too, and continue to hope that this latest round of precipitation will help make planting possible this year.
This week’s #ThrowbackThursday featured work is a beautifully apt homage to that which flowers in spare conditions. It’s an old traditional style a link bracelet formed of rectangles, given Wings’s own inimitable twist. It’s one that dates back almost two decades — to 2006 for its creation, and 2008 for its sale, if memory serves. He created this one of seven separate rectangles of stelring silver, each individually saw-cut, filed, stamped, and shaped freehand.
Six of the links shared the same stampwork design: three deeply incised diamond shapes, their centers rising in relief, arranged in roughly the shape of an equilateral triangle, with points inward, two as a base and one above. He flanked each single upper diamond, with a single blossom motif on either side. Together, they formed a triptych of Eyes of Spirit, watchful, guiding, with a still spare world just beginning to flower around them . . . much as our own appears at this point in the spring season.
Once the stampwork was complete, Wings shaped each rectangle slightly — a very faint doming of the centers, just enough to allow them to be linked together and have the bracelet hold both shape and comfort for the wearer. With one notable exception, he alternated them so that the single diamond shape pointed up on one, down on the next, and thus repeated the pattern. Once arranged, he added the link mechanisms.
And those were not the ordinary “links” that most people envision for a bracelet — no chains here. No, this is a more complex pattern, but it allows for link removal and addition all the same. It’s accomplished by fashioning tiny, exceedingly narrow segments of sterling silver in the form and shape of a tube to the edges of the rectangular links: On one side are two short lengths, one at the upper edge and one at the lower, with a gap of the same size in between; on the other edge of the link, a single one is soldered to the very center. This permits them to be fitted together, which is why the arrangement of the links needs to be established first.
Once the hand-made “tubes” are all soldered securely into place, they are all fitted together, and a sterling silver “pin” is threaded through all three of them to hold them in place, its ends hammered to close off the openings at either end. If you’ve ever fitted together the loops on ProPanel fencing and shot the bolt through them to hold them in place? It’s the same basic principle. The difference here is that they are entirely closed, all solid silver with no open spaces between.
I said that six of the links shared the same basic design. So what of the seventh? The seventh was the one he placed at one end, the end with the sterling silver toggle bar that would be fitted through the loop soldered to the opposite end. This one he chose to set off from the rest with a different stampwork pattern, although it paid homage to the Eyes of Spirit in the other links: a Morning Star motif, each of its four spokes a diamond shape of its own, each one formed freehand of its own slimmer diamond pattern, a single stamp repeated four times around a tiny central hoop.
It’s a reminder that Spirit watches over us, guides us, illumination and direction flowering beneath its gaze. In this, the hardest of all seasons here, it’s especially crucial to remember. This is, after all, a flowering season, too, and the work we do now becomes the work of abundance.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
