The summer sky is medicine. The spirits of sky at this time of year are beings to be called, welcomed, invoked, gathered, their gifts channeled and directed and put to use for good. It’s a time when the storms unleash their fury for the good of us all, warriors armed with lightning and thunder phalanxed with the winds, seeking not to harm but only to defend the earth.
Those from places where climate is calmer and weather less extreme sometimes have difficulty understanding that the same phenomenon that produces hail and flood is the very one that keeps us all alive.
It’s true of all elemental forces: wind, rain, storm, sun. Mere humans can face none of them at their full strength, but together they work in concert to dilute their own power in ways that bring us the benefit of their gifts, usually at an intensity we can withstand and even turn to our own use. In this place, it is the monsoonal rains of summer coupled with the heavy snows of winter that ensure water year-round, but they — and we — need the fiery rays of the sun to turn water into growth and eventual abundance.
Today’s featured work was a special commission, one that embodied both the shades of the storm and the shape of the sun, brought together in the embrace of a silver hoop. Its design was rooted, like summer wildflowers busy gathering sun as they wait for the rains, in another ring, one that was similar in color and expression and yet very different too. The first ring was called Flowering Indigo, and our friend was taken with both design and symbolism, but it was not quite her. It’s been five years, and off the top of my head, I no longer recall whether that ring had already sold, or whether she simply knew that she wanted a different design, but I do know that Wings created this version uniquely for her (as well as another, one featuring green turquoise, whose roots were similarly grounded in another piece).
At any rate, Flowering Indigo (like its green turquoise sibling) was a solitaire made with a plain square lapis lazuli cabochon, but with a dual band: two pieces of half-round wire soldered together, each piece hand-stamped in a repeating pattern of a simple three-pronged blossom design. As I recall, our friend was not especially concerned with the shape and color of the cabochon, provided that it was also lapis, but she wanted a version with a single-width band. Wings went through his inventory of cabochons, found a beautiful oval just slightly off round, fairly highly-domed and in a strikingly beautiful blue-violet color, and then set to work.
He cut a length of sterling silver half-round wire, solid and substantial but fairly slender in width, to the appropriate size to serve as the band. To prevent duplication, he sought a different stamp from the three-pronged flowering one he had used in the earlier ring. Instead, he chose a highly stylized sunrise symbol, one that featured a half-moon arc embedded with the graduated rays of a rising sun, these rounded at the base and pointed at the ends like the petals of a silvered sunflower. This he chased down the entire length of the band on the outer (i.e., raised, half-round) surface. He then placed it against a mandrel and gently hammered it into the proper curavture, using a special jeweler’s mallet in order to avoid distorting the stampwork.
Band complete, he set about the bezel and backing. As noted above, if memory serves, this cabochon was fairly highly-domed, but as I recall, our friend wanted a bezel designed so that she would not have to worry about it catching on anything, or the stone being jarred loose, while she was working. Wings solved this by building up the base of the setting and creating a higher, hand-scalloped bezel to hold the stone.
First, he cut the setting’s backing, freehand, from a substantial gauge of sterling silver; if you look at the photo, just below the twisted silver trim, you can see how thick it is. This made it possible to hold the stone securely and also to bring the bezel itself up high around it without the overall effect becoming disproportionate. This piece he cut slightly larger than the cabochon itself, in order to leave room for the twisted silver trim, then filed the edges completely smooth.
Next, he measured a length of sterling silver bezel wire against the stone and cut it to size. This he trimmed by hand, snipping out small inverted triangles spaced equally apart around its circumference. Silversmiths often use saw-toothed or scalloped bezels to hold stones securely and to set the cabochon off to good effect, and it’s possible to buy wire already made to order. This version, though, combined the two patterns, serration and scalloping, to create a spectacular setting that kept the stone safe, produced no sharp prongs to catch on anything, and still revealed the cab’s mysterious surface beautifully. They also evoked the feel of a flower, opening into the light.
Bezel created, he soldered it securely into place, then measured and cut a length of delicate twisted silver. This he soldered directly onto the backing, placed against the side of the bezel and just wide enough to extend to the backing’s very edge. then he soldered the entire backing onto the band, oxidized the joins and the stampwork thoroughly, and buffed it to a silken, glowing medium polish. All the remained was to set the stone, hand-buff it one final time, bless it, and send it off to our friend.
It wound up being a piece that, while substantially different from the earlier version, nevertheless embodied the very spirit of “flowering indigo”: a jewel in deep mysterious blues set into glowing silver, all stormclouds and silver rain gathered in the embrace of suns whose rays flowered like the petals of summer.
It’s a work that was created at this same time of year half a decade ago, a time when the rains would have been visiting us daily, when the wildflowers now in full bloom would have been gathering sun in the shadow of the storm. In its way, it was a work that embodied the spirit of the season more thoroughly than its predecessor — one that, five years on, still suits weather and time, earth and the elemental forces that sustain her, and us.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2019; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.
