Last night, the lightning began just as we went to bed. Some minutes later, I could feel the spray of the rain filtering in through the screen. It seemed a shame to close the window after such a hot day, but the angle of the winds were just right to send it beneath the jalousie-crank pane and into the room.
It rained for a good while, steadily and heavily. But I no longer sleep through the night anymore, and so sometime after one o’clock I found myself awake, staring at the fragment of the moon rising through the clearing dark. It’s only a waning crescent now, of course, and no longer holds the soft pink undertones of the full moon beneath its amber robes, but it’s still unusually near, still aglow with a subtle fire.
It put me in mind of this week’s featured #ThrowbackThursday work, a pair of tiny but radiant midsummer moons in the form of stud earrings. These were born of a special commission from a relative who, owing to urgent external pressures, needed to compile a variety of traditional items in a very short period of time for her adult son’s return home. Among those items were earrings worn by men in their culture’s tradition, tiny turquoise studs and equally small studs set with Queen Conch shell, otherwise known in our communities simply as “pink shell.” She inquired about the possibility of commissioning some by Wings, and he agreed to create them, but as a gift — our contribution to the tasks involved in their tradition.
I’ll feature the pair of turquoise studs in some future #TBT post, but for today, the pink shell studs seem particularly apt. They are, as is the case with most studs, very simple: a cabochon set into a bezel that has been soldered to a post, with the earring backs added. But it takes a sure hand to center something so small properly, and to do it without the clumping of solder or firescale around the tiny post. Wings settled on fashioning saw-toothed bezels for this pair — a bezel style sometimes known as “serrated,” for their pointed saw-cut edges — because they tend to hold small stones securely, often more securely than scalloped or plain bezels, while still allowing as much of the cabochon’s surface as possible to be displayed. For cabochons that have a fair amount of doming, as these did, saw-toothed bezels are an especially elegant solution, because beneath the points of the serrated edges, they seem very nearly to fade out of sight entirely. Scroll up to take another look, and you’ll see that, in this instance, the combination of serrated edges and the large butterfly backs combine to make each tiny pink shell take on the form and shape of a flower.
I had spoken with the recipient some months previously about the possibility of this order, and so I knew that pink shell would be needed at some point. It’s not as easy to find anymore. It’s harder to still to find natural pink shell cabochons; most of what’s out there is commercial supply that has been formed into doublets or triplets: Doublets are natural cabochons that have either a backing applied or (as is common in this case) a protective coating adhered to their surface, often resin, which makes them shiny, almost pearlescent; triplets have both the backing and the adhesive upper layer [although you might find some master lapidarists who use all natural materials for the additional layers, particularly when cabbing especially high-quality specimens].
At any rate, I went on a deep dive through the world of online sellers in search of natural pink shell cabochons of the proper size (small) and shape (round). At last I found a supplier who offered exactly that, so I sent off an order for a good number of them and prayed that the description would prove true. In such circumstances, it’s always wise to order more than the number needed, because true natural materials will vary, sometimes widely and visibly, in color, patterning, and doming or thickness. Scroll up again to look at the image, and you’ll see that what at first glance seems to be a plain soft pink is in fact not: It’s a pale pink around the edges, with more intense coloration in the form of a shaded circle at the center.
The reason those two appear virtually identical is that I chose the two with the best patterning and intensity of color from the entire lot. Wings usually tasks me with such jobs because of my ability [or curse, depending on one’s viewpoint] to see the faintest gradations of color and shade, and he wanted her to have the best match, and the best traditional coloration, of the lot. Cabochons selected and passed to him, he set about creating the bezels, soldering on the posts, oxidizing and tumbling them for glow, and then setting the “stones” [“stones,” because they weren’t actually stones at all, but pieces of shell]. Once complete, he blessed them and the turquoise pair in the traditional way, and I packed them up and sent them on their way.
Made from shell as they were, they should have reminded me of water, but every time I see the photo, I’m reminded instead of the subtle fire of the Berry Moon, or as my cousins elsewhere call it, the Halfway-Summer Moon: a pale cooling glow from the flame of the moon’s medicine light.
If the clouds clear, perhaps we’ll see a slice of it again tonight.
~ Aji
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