You wouldn’t know it at the moment, but a storm is on the way.
We’ve had multiple signals yesterday and today, small episodes of accumulation of the sort of high thin clouds that signal a change in the weather. They were everywhere at dawn again, save for due north; there, a solid bank of blue-violet blackened the sunrise sky.
Now, those closer have receded, and a high sun has lightened their hue, but they remain on all sides: building, spreading, coalescing into the pale bands and traces of the season — cloud-webbed skies, fans of a cold and wintry light.
Such webs and light as have visited us daily this week have put me in mind of one of Wings’s works from near eleven years ago, one of a pair of pairs, earrings, featuring stones that were remarkably similar, yet with their own discrete identities. We featured the first pair in this space only a couple of months ago, and as I noted then of the stones:
These two sets were unusual in that whomever did the lapidary work on them gave them a much, much higher gloss than is usual with turquoise of this type. Most turquoise, particularly the natural kind, is polished to a relatively low luster, allowing the richness of the stone’s textures to show itself clearly. Some lapidarists, however, prefer to give their work an ultra-high gloss, achieved by using specific types of solutions in the water during the cabbing process. It tends to have the effect of flattening the textures, but it gives the stones a stupendous glass-like finish that leaves them looking wet, like pools of water in the light.
Such was the case with these two pairs of pairs: both bright sky blue, one with green matrix and one with bronzed gold. The latter we will revisit in a future post; the former are the ones shown here today.
Today’s featured throwback work is that “latter” pair, the ones built around matched sky-blue cabochons with the “bronzed gold” matrix. And as with the previous pair, their shape meant that their creation began with the stones, of a sufficiently unique shape to require Wings to build the design around them.
I couldn’t tell you now, indisputably, the source mine of these stones; it’s been too long. As I said of those used in the other pair:
The stones themselves were likely from Nevada: possibly Royston; possibly Fox. In truth, it looks most like Fox turquoise, one of whose hallmarks is bright green matrix floating over the surface of the blue. There are also a couple of Colorado mines that produce similar material.
Informed guesswork, and as you can see from the description, parts of it hold true for these, as well. But not entirely. As you can see if you compare the two, the stone color is nearly identical, but the matrix shades and patterning are very, very different. It’s entirely possible, of course, that such different patterning can be found in the same mine. The material from some of the more prodigious producers, such as Nevada’s Royston District, can manifest in all sorts of shapes and shades and styles, from fairly fine spiderwebbing in golds and coppers and blacks to blocky patches in similar shades to swirls of greens and blue to very little matrix at all. That is now true, too, of Arizona’s Turquoise Mountain Mine, which used to be known for good sky-blue stone finely webbed with gold-colored matrix. Now, what comes out of there is as likely to have rich greens as blues, with bands and patches of bold coppery reds and bronzed browns and, yes, gold-colored traces. [Note that I continually say “gold-colored”; this is not gold, however bright and clear the color looks, but more likely iron pyrite that, combined with the shade of the stone itself, simply manifests more at the yellow end of its metallic spectrum.]
And these, I now suspect, were most likely what might be called “intermediate” specimens from Turquoise Mountain: those manifest in the original sky blue with gold-colored webbing, but transitional — not ultra-fine spiderwebbing, but wider and bolder lines, perhaps the first stage in the change from the old look to the new blockier, banded-matrix material being found there now. In point of fact, these particular Skystone specimens bear a remarkable resemblance to our own dawn skies here this morning. And these were especially beautiful in that they were very nearly perfect mirror images of each other, rare even among so-called “earring pairs” cabochons.
And so Wings built a beautifully traditional pair of earrings around them: simple, spare, allowing the stones to speak, yet detailed in such a way as to allow them to dangle and dance. He began by creating the bezels: backings extended slightly beyond the perimeter of the stones on all sides; scalloped bezels to hold the cabochons securely while allowing their lightly domed surfaces to rise above their upper edges; slender twisted silver around the edges to make them “pop.”
But when he created the bezel backs, he did two additional things. First, he extended the upper point into a narrow rounded arc. Second, he extended the wider base into a squared-off tab. he then cut the entire pieces out freehand, using a tiny jeweler’s saw, and filed the edges smooth. Next, he hand-drilled a tiny hole in the top arc and two similar holes, side by side, in the bottom tab of each. These extended tabs, thus drilled, would hold the jump rings that would permit him to attach the earring wires at the top and the dangling pendants at the bottom.
And the next step would be the creation of those pendants. It is possible to buy them pre-made from various jewelry supplies, but Wings makes his own. The process is straightforward and relatively simple: He has a specialized anvil with matching stamps, each side carved in a particular shape — in this case, small fan shells. A thin piece of sheet silver is laid over the shape embossed in the anvil, with a little extra protruding beyond its flat edge. The silver is stamped, hard and deep, into the form, repoussé-fashion , which domes and shapes it from the reverse. If it’s sized correctly and shaped to the form’s edges, a proper strike can cut it free of the silver, and all that remains is to file the edges smooth. In this instance, though, because Wings wanted the extended tab at the top, he would have used a slightly larger piece of silver, then cut the entire piece out of the surrounding silver freehand with his jeweler’s saw, filing the edges smooth afterward. Lastly, he drilled the needed pairs of holes in each tab. Everything was now ready for polishing.
With works that involve small pieces like these, polishing is not a one-step operation. With larger works, he can use his buffing wheel, and the choice of wheel size and material and the duration of the process dictate the finish it produces, which can range from a heavily-aged Florentine to a highly-reflective mirror finish. The bezels and backs of the earrings were probably just large enough for such a process, but I suspect he went a different route. Buffing small pieces on a wheel not only risks fingers; because of the need to hold such pieces, the fingers tend to obscure parts off the silver, making it difficult to obtain a smooth, even finish.
But there is an alternative, the same one he would have used anyway for the small shell pendants: a mix of tumbling and hand-buffing. A tumbler uses water and other fluids mixed with shot; the pieces are placed in the solution and vibrated over a set4 period of time to permit the shot, lubricated by the fluids, to polish the silver. It does not provide the sort of tight control obtainable with a buffing wheel, but for pieces too small for the wheel to touch, it still produces a good range of finishes — and sometimes, a softer, gentler finish that what the wheel offers. Wings would have tumbled the pendants, and in this case, I suspect he tumbled the bezels, too. Once complete, they are removed from the tumbler solution, rinsed and dried thoroughly, and then hand-buffed with a soft cloth to even out any inconsistencies, or to brighten or soften the finish, respectively.
Polishing stage complete, Wings added jump rings to the tops and attached the earring wires, and added more jump rings to the lower tabs and attached the shell pendants. Lastly, he set the stones. The finished pieces resulted in a bold traditional style, a simple one centered around the bright shades of the stones, that hung gracefully from the ear to dance and catch the light.
At a glance, these probably seem like earrings in the shades of summer, bright turquoise blue and a golden sun. But look outside our window today, and you’ll see how well they suit this season, too. For we have, overhead, these very earrings, writ atmospherically large: cloud-webbed skies, fans of a cold and wintry light . . . and the very gift of the Skystone — rain, now in the snowy robes of winter — well on the way.
~ 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.
