In light of the style and spirit of yesterday’s featured work, I was inspired to look through our photographic record of Wings’s work in recent years for another bracelet wrought in a similar fashion. It took some doing; if memory serves, he has only crafted one other hook bracelet since 2010 or so. But for a while between 2008 and 2010, he created a semi-regular series of them, giving new life to an earlier classic style while staying true to the traditional spirit of the design.
Today’s featured work was one of the earlier ones of that period, if I remember correctly — perhaps the first or second of the series. It was also, perhaps, the most classic in form and shape, with a perfectly round cabochon of bright blue Arizona turquoise linking both sides of a flared band stamped in eminently traditional motifs. In this particular instance, I believe stone and band drove the design equally, but the execution, as always, began with the band.
Wings started with a length of relatively light-gauge sterling silver, because with this style, the band needs to flexible enough for the wearer to expand and contract it while hooking and unhooking the clasp. Most often, he uses a perfectly straight band made of a long rectangle. This time, however, he cut it, freehand, into a custom shape: Most of the band was the same width, but as it neared either end, he gently flared it outward so that each end was slightly wider than the center, giving it a sense of grace and flow. At each end, he extended the center outward into a narrow tab, an organic part of the whole, unbroken and unarticulated save for its narrower width. These tabs would be used to link each end to the setting holding the stone, but for now, they were left extending straight out from either end.
Then it was time for the stampwork. Wings used a grand total of four stamps to create a fairly elaborate design, one that incorporated earthy imagery and elemental forces interspersed with world-based concepts of sacred space. He began with a tiered motif that, turned narrow end down, represents the thunderhead — signifying both the cloud that brings the rain and the rain itself. Turned narrow end up, it resembles an old traditional symbol found particularly in Pueblo pottery, one known as the “kiva steps,” the entry to the sacred space of Pueblo ceremony. When pairs of the symbol are brought together at their wider base, it evokes the imagery of sacred space of a different sort: the sacred directions, with spokes reaching to the cardinal points, corners to the ordinal points. It was this paired pattern that he chose for the center of the band, chasing the alternating design down its full length. At each end, just at the base of the extended tab, he added only a portion of the stamp, the single end spoke with its “shoulders” just visible.
Then Wings chose to additional stamps, both resonant for the people indigenous to this place: a sunrise symbol; and an elongated, gracefully arched triangle often used to represent mountains like those sacred here. The mountain design is scored with vertical lines across its width, and it’s another symbol that Wings frequently pairs to create a more powerful motif yet: This one, paired at its open base sides, forms an Eye of Spirit, a symbol of Spirit’s wisdom and visionary power. In this instance, he kept the halves segregated, alternating them with the sunrises in a chased pattern down either edge. Finally, he placed a flowering blossom stamp in a repeating pattern down the length of each short tab. Then he filed the edges smooth, beveling them slightly for comfort.
Next, he turned his attention to the center setting, the part of the bracelet that would link the two ends of the band. With this design, such settings are centered entirely around the stone.
As I said earlier, it was a perfectly round cabochon of Arizona turquoise, this one the perfect, clear sky blue of the Crayola crayon of the same name. It was, if memory serves, labeled “Sleeping Beauty,” which is known for its clarity and lack of matrix. However, this was slightly pale than the usual Sleeping Beauty, more the shade of Kingman turquoise. Still, I chose the above photo from among a total of four for a reason: If you look at the top of the stone, you’ll see a very small inclusion of silvery pyrite matrix at the edge, right next to the bezel. Pyrite is common among Arizona turquoise, but in stone of this particular shade of blue, it’s especially common in Ithaca Peak turquoise, which hails from an eponymous smaller deposit. After a decade, it’s impossible to say with certainty, and it could have come from any of the three mines, but given the mountain imagery on the band, coupled with the relatively smaller output of the mine, I like the notion that it might have come from Ithaca Peak. It’s a beautiful, classic Native turquoise, and in this instance, the perfect complement to setting and band.
The setting consists of bezel and back, and Wings cuts his backs freehand, extended slightly beyond the size of the cab to allow for the bezel and, as in this case, an additional accent of twisted silver. For this back, however, he did not cut it into a perfect circle; instead, he extended two sides into single short tabs, then excised the silver within the tabs’ edges; these would form the “eyes” of the hook-and-eye closure (one that’s also known as toggle-and-loop).
Wings chose a scalloped bezel for this stone, one that both set off its domed appearance and linked it symbolically to the blossom motifs on each tab, since the scalloped patter tends to make stone and setting resemble a flower. Before setting the cabochon, however, he oxidized both setting and band, then buffed each to a slight Florentine finish. After setting the stone, he then gently curved each tab on the band upward, then hooked them through the open eyes on either side of the stone’s setting. The result permitted either left-hand or right-hand closure of the bracelet.
It was a beautiful design wrought in a beautifully simple style, but it was the combination of stampwork and stone that made the piece. With a perfect flowering Skystone set among the mountains and the light, evoking the powers of the directions and the rain and traditional ceremony, the bracelet seemed to embody a pool of sacred waters.
Given the presence and location of the people’s own sacred lake, the result was powerful. It also seemed, in retrospect, perhaps inevitable, a piece that mapped the geogrpahy of Wings’s culture and spirit.
~ Aji
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