After yesterday’s events, exhaustion settled in last night and we made an early night of it. As a result, we both awakened early — the first time, just before four-thirty — to find that the elk had returned. Enough new snow clouds had moved in overnight to keep the skies lighter than their usual full dark at that hour, and we could see them clearly out the window, apparently mostly having fed and now lying, relaxed and content, in the snow.
We awakened again an hour later, at five-thirty, to find that they were still there. The real shock came at six-thirty, when there was already full light, and they were still scattered across the northeast field just outside the window, a few feeding off the giant hay bale, one scratching its head up by the studio before ambling over to the bird feeder to take advantage of the suet and seed available there.
It was a great gift, after a day of great gifts, and it gave us a good start to this day. So did the early snowfall, intermittent and mostly flurries, butt occasionally heavier. Now, the clouds cling still to the horizon on all sides and wrap themselves around the peaks, but overhead, the sky is a clear cold blue, channeling the sun’s silver midday light.
It’s a world braided by all the bands of winter today: clear sky and clouds, an arc of shimmering light locked in a dance with the shadows now, and a cold so deep it will steal your breath before you’ve felt the winds fingertips brush your face. It’s a day of medicine, of healing, and of a simultaneous need for shelter, for the solidity of four walls and the reviving heat of a fire.
And if the clouds to the west are any indication, it may be a day that defies the forecast, too, and delivers a bit more snow before it’s done.
Such a weaving of opposites, of elemental powers and sacred spirits put me in mind of today’s featured #TBT work, a large, wide, vintage-style cuff wrought entirely freehand thirteen years ago. It was one created very much in the tradition of old-style Native silversmithing, and Wings intended it as a tribute to those towering ancestors of such artistry. It would be inaccurate to call it “experimental,” because he designed and executed it entirely with purpose, but he did it in such a fashion as almost to guarantee that the result would hold surprises.
But as is usually case, it began with the silver: solid sterling, cut freehand to length and width — the former six inches or perhaps a bit more, the latter a good two inches across — and with the edges filed smooth. Then he set to work on the pattern, which would require the freehand scoring of the band: nine parallel lines scored the entire length of it to create ten full, roughly equal rows.
Then came hours’ upon hours’ worth of freehand stampwork.
After thirteen years, I no longer remember the order in which he stamped the rows, whether he did all the chisel work first or moved in visual order from one row to the next. I suspect it was a mix, because the chisel work was not merely labor-intensive but, after a while, tedious . . . and also tiring. The year that Wings created this cuff would turn out to be the same year he had rotator-cuff surgery (with a 360-degree tear plus a subscapular tear on and beneath his left shoulder), which meant that his dominant hand was doing double duty all the time. Wielding a hammer and chisel with that consistency and depth would have been exhausting.
Because six of the rows? Were all chisel work. Now, this is not an ordinary chisel, not like what you’ll find in a construction worker’s toolbox. This is a small jeweler’s stamp, with a short, narrow, pen-like handle and a stamp end cut into a shortened version of a chisel’s blade. It’s tiny, and while it produces a bold straight mark? It takes a lot of weight and strength to ensure that it does so. And if I had to guess? I’d say that those six rows, between them, collectively hold at least six hundred strikes of the chisel-stamp’s blade. That’s conservative; the reality is probably much, much more.
You’ll notice that the direction of the lines is not uniform. This is the aspect to which I referred when I mentioned the not-quite-applicable term “experimental.” Scroll back up to the top and look closely at the rows. Yes, you’ll notice first that they don’t all aim the same direction. Look more closely . . . and see how they displace the silver. The top row is a good place to start.
Early Indigenous silversmiths in this area of course did not have the array of power tools available to jewelers now, but a lot of contemporary smiths like Wings do not use power tools anyway, save fro grinding and buffing. The bigger change by far is not in the jeweler’s use of them, but the manufacturing use of them to design and mass-produce stamps that can now be refined into astonishingly small, tight, complex patterns. Not so very many generations ago, the only stamps available were those made individually . . . or were plainer extant tools, coopted for the purpose.
Like, say, chisels.
But those early Native smiths knew their metals. They knew exactly what size or weight chisel blade to use, the angle to hold it at to produce a particular pattern, the degree of force needed to strike it. And if you keep that blade angled just right, the strikes placed tightly together? It produces a shirred overlay effect like the one you see in the top row. Think the pleats on a skirt, the way the folds of fabric overlay one another and yet still show themselves individually. It’s the same effect here, only with solid metal.
In the fourth row, Wings angled the blade on a slight diagonal, but struck it head-on, directly on the top, alternating the direction of the angle at the midpoint of the cuff. This produced the clean, straight indentations you see here. The fifth row reversed the order of the angles, again, changing direction at the midpoint . . . but again, he used the angled strike to alter the flow of the displaced metal. Rows nine and ten roughly mirrored the pattern found in rows four and five, while row seven reflected the style of row one.
This left him with four rows still unstamped (although, as I said earlier, he may have stamped those first, done all the chisel-work first, or proceeded to mix the two; from my recollection, I believe it was the last approach). Three rows in from either edge (as shown in the photo, rows three and eight), he elected to create a chased motif, again, with the direction reversed at the midpoint. It required the use of three stamps between the two rows to effectuate it. And while I know at first glance they look identical, look again: row three features a sharply-pointed triangle with an open base and perfectly straight sides, alternating with a tiny hoop between each one, chased in that positive/negative pattern; row eight features the exact same pattern, using the same tiny hoop, but with a different triangle, one whose apex is convex on the underside.
for row six, he chose a single stamp, also roughly triangular in shape, but with a much sharper apex, a closed base, and concave indentations on either side of the center. If you look at it sideways, you’ll see its more ordinary use: It’s a stamp most often used to represent elk hoofprints, or sometimes those of a deer. [Fitting for this day, yes?] These he arrayed point to point in a repeating pattern down the entire length of the row. The indentations in that particular stamp, like the chisel marks, take oxidation easily and well, and provide a sense of dimensionality and depth to the finished work.
One that row was complete, all the remained was row two. This would require an exceptionally sure hand and delicate touch, because it would consist of ajouré-style cut-work, in which the silver is pierced and then, using a small jeweler’s saw with an impossibly slender blade, cutting the design out of the thick silver entirely freehand. He began with two points, arrowheads facing each other directly at the midpoint if the band, with a small space between. He cut these out carefully, excising perfect slender triangles of silver, then moved to the what appears to be the “shaft.” of each. Note my word choice, because this is no ordinary arrow shaft; instead, it is a pair of twinned heartlines, like those common to carvings of small animals here. You will hear non-Native dealers call them all sorts of things, from “lifeline” to “breathline,” but Wings has always used the old term “heartline” in his work. He also renders his heartlines in unique ways: often with dual termini, signifying that the breath of life flows in both directions; also often with a zizagging, lightning-bolt like path, or with an undulating, flowing, current-like pattern that evokes the water.
That last is fitting, especially here. The expression “Water is life,” now become a slogan coopted by those of colonial extraction as performance, is in fact a truth always known to our peoples, one as timeless as life itself. It’s also a phrase Wings no longer uses, finding it diluted beyond all recognition now. But he has also always maintained, unlike modern sloganeers, that water is breath: the breath of life, yes, its ebb and flow the Earth’s own respiration. And we also have always called water by its other name: The First Medicine, the one in which we, like the very mountains here, were all born; the one that flows within our very bodies and keeps us all alive.
So it’s apt, on this day and for this work, that the heartline should also be a source of respiration and the embodiment of medicine. It’s a work of simple, elemental materials that combine to create a phenomenally complex whole, a work of winter spirits, of water and light, of the gifts of the ancestors and traditions still maintained this day.
And now, as I write, the snow has begun to fall again — just the tiniest of flurries, flakes widely spaced and shimmering in the sunlight. But there are dark clouds behind it that hold out the promise of more, and indeed, these days of snow have been the greatest of gifts indeed: in the deadliest of drought, the first medicine and the breath of life. We inhabit a world braided by all the bands of winter now, and it will thrive all the better for it.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2021; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
