Yesterday ultimately presented us with a rapidly-altered forecast: a 50-60% chance of snow through midday, confirming our suspicion that the encroaching clouds did indeed herald a change of weather. Unfortunately for us, any weather reached no lower than the peaks, but if snow can fall in only place, that is at least the best place for it. Today, a similar webwork of clouds has returned to the skies, but the air is slightly warmer, and there is unlikely to be any snow today at all.
Still, we have been blessed with precipitation recently, and in a drought as deep and deadly as this one, we welcome it as the medicine that it is. The calendar may say autumn, but for the moment, winter is here — a season not of death, as conventional wisdom would have it, but truly one of rebirth. Winter weather is a medicine of earth and water and sky, and in this land, one of the greatest of gifts of the entire year.
Today’s featured #TBT work one is one that calls together the medicine, and the gifts, in one stunning work of wearable art. It’s a throwback to about a year and a half ago, in terms, of its completion, but it’s one that was conceived almost exactly two years ago, very nearly to the day. It was a gift for a friend, the wife of one of Wings’s oldest friends and a fellow Native artist, one that grew directly out of preparations for our own wedding after so many, many years together.
Our friends live in another state and had family commitments that prevented them from joining us. But Jack had one thing we needed for the traditional part of the ceremony, a fan of a very particular type for the blessing. When he offered it, Wings asked him what he would like in return, and the answer was a work specially made for his wife. Wings agreed instantly, and suggested she browse the Web site to see if any particular category or style spoke to her; once she had an idea what she would like, he would commence design work on the piece.
As it turned out the piece that spoke to her spirit was itself already not only spoken for, but long since sold. It was a cuff bracelet called The Waters, a personal favorite of my own and one that was purchased by a dear friend of ours in Texas (you can see it at the link). It featured a hand-hammered band of medium width set with three stones: a larger Colorado Evans cabochon at center with hand-made ingot rosettes at its corners; two smaller ovals of extraordinary new Turquoise Mountain material flanking the center cab; and a hand-cut turtle overlay on each end. After a few questions determined that our friend was less concerned with the color, pattern, and type of turquoise than simply the fact of the three turquoise cabochons in similar placement, Wings set about creating a version that captured the spirit of the original but would be uniquely hers in execution (and thus preserving the uniqueness of the earlier cuff for our other friend).
In this instance, the design began with the stones. We had to find three high-grade turquoise cabochons among his inventory of stones that would coordinate sufficiently in color and pattern and shape. He recruited me to help with this aspect of the process, knowing that I would be able to lay hands instantly upon those in his sizeable inventory that had the potential to fit all three requirements. After trying a dizzying array of combinations, we finally settled on the three you see here, all of which, if memory serves, were part of one of his purchases of Turquoise Mountain parcels in recent years.
It needed a larger stone for center, one that would be big enough and bold enough to carry the bracelet’s size and complex design, and one Turquoise Mountain cabochon stood out above the rest, this extraordinary trapezoidal cabochon of old-style material:
Turquoise from Arizona’s Turquoise Mountain Mine manifests now in two primary forms. The older, more traditional look is much like the cabochons in this bracelet, hard bright blue stone in shades ranging from robin’s egg to sky, finely, tightly webbed with a spiderweb matrix mostly in a delicate golden shade, sometimes more coppery reddish tones.
In recent years, though, the new material being mined in that district has had a distinctly different look, one that combines the brilliant blues and white host-rock stippling of Arizona stone with the bright greens patched with blocky golden-bronze matrix more often found in southern Colorado and in Nevada’s Royston District. It seems fitting, for two discrete works that shared some similarities of source stone and spirit, that one (this one) should be adorned with the former and the other (the earlier cuff) with the second variety.
As you can see on the earlier cuff, the size of the center cabochon extended right to the edges of the piece. This one, though, was a bit wider at the base, a product of its freeform trapezoidal shape, and so Wings knew already that it would need to be elevated above the surface of the band, as you can see in the image immediately below:
In point of fact, all three stones were elevated, but that was a much later step. First came the band itself.
Wings cut it length and width, rounding the corners and filing the edges smooth. You’ll notice, if you compare the two cuffs, that this one is slightly wider, but it didn’t begin that way. No, he didn’t have to recreate a second band. Have you guessed why yet?
It’s the millwork.
He had texturized the band of the earlier cuff by hammering it by hand, small, steady strikes of a jeweler’s hammer to created a vintage look and style. Hammering does displace the silver, but only slightly, because each strike is limited to its own small space; most of the displacement occurs upward, in the ridged edges of the hammer’s indentations.
Not so with millwork. Wings does all his millwork by hand, which can involve simply displacing a more solid piece of silver into two or more rows, with its attendant peaks and grooves, such as what you see here. But millwork can also involve taking a thinner piece of silver and placing it face to face with a wax or metal template, and rolling through the mill to transfer the design, in full three-dimensional relief, into the surface of the silver. It can be a much tricker proposition, trying to keep both pieces of metal solidly together and perfectly straight, no slippage, while hand-cranking it through a cast-iron and steel mill. It’s hard, heavy, laborious work, requiring patience, a sure and steady hand, attention to detail, and no small amount of muscle. It also flattens the silver significantly, and the displaced silver in turn widens the band. Think of a piece of Play-Doh, shaped into a thick rectangle, when you push down on it from the center: The clay spills out to either side, flattening and widening simultaneously. It’s the same with metal — but given the weight and solidity of silver, this gives you some idea of the muscle strength needed to produced hand-milled pieces of this size.
Wings has a few such templates that he particularly favors, one of which is the earthy geologic pattern you see here, flowing lines and swirls and whorls like rock layered together over time on a epochal scale. Given that he would already be working with spirits of water and sky in the turtles and turquoise, earth seemed a fitting backdrop for both.
Once the millwork was complete, he turned his attention to the overlays and the bezel work.
The bezel work needed to come first, so that the placement of the overlays, turtles and flowers alike, would be proportional. As noted above, he also knew that he would need to raise each bezel above the band. The purpose of elevating them is to protect the integrity of band, bezels, and stones: With larger cabochons that occupy significant space, it’s often not especially safe for any of them to place them directly atop the band. The genius of cuff bracelets is their adjustability, but expanding and contracting them to put them on and take them off creates a yawing effect along the arc. This yaw can eventually fracture the solder that holds settings in place . . . leading, potentially, to breakage of the silver and fracture and loss of the stones. In such circumstances, he creates a tiny sterling silver tube of proportionate length and solders it, upright, to the surface of the band, centered as needed; then he solders the back of the bezel to its open upper end. The result is a big, bold cuff set with beautiful, equally bold stones, but without the risk to any of its constituent parts.
These bezels he fashioned by hand to suit the freeform shapes of the stones, scalloped edges setting off the cabochons against solid backs. He then edged each one with twisted silver to make the stones “pop.” Once he had the bezels set in their respective places, one at the center and the two smaller ones equidistant from it on either side, he turned to the overlays. He cut out each of the turtles entirely freehand, then stamped them in like fashion: tiny wing-like motifs for eyes, a plain open-based triangle for the tail; a shell ringed by the same wing-like symbol, creating a flowering effect; and at the center, a Morning Star formed of four long open-triangle spokes with a tiny hoop at the centre. These he overlaid on the outside of either small cabochon, near each end of the band.
Instead of ingot rosettes, he chose to create four floral overlays, a single eight-petaled flower stamp atop hand-cut silver circles. The stampwork was sufficiently broad and deep to flatten each circle significantly, enlarging its circumference. He overlaid them at the four corners of what would be the center bezel:
Overlays complete, all that remained were final steps. First, he buffed the entire piece to a soft, velvety Florentine finish, giving it a vintage, gently-aged look. Then he carefully set the stones, gave it a final overall buffing by hand, and blessed the piece for our friend.
Then he passed it me for packing and shipping.
The result was an eminently traditional piece, all bold lines and bright gems wrought in old ways, but with a unique and contemporary feel that would allow our friend to wear it for any occasion, even ordinary daily wear. And given that it was a trade in the old way, there is a balance of the spirit to it: in exchange for a work of medicine, a medicine of earth and water and sky, brought together as only Wings can do it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2020; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
