Today is an enormous change from yesterday — not a moth in sight, nor much of the sun, either. The temperature can best be described as wintry, not to say bitter, courtesy of a driving wind. The skies are mostly gray and heavy with snow, although very little of that has fallen since last night. We were granted an inch, perhaps a bit now, and now the air is seeded with intermittent blasts of sleet and graupel. So much for the first day of “official” spring.
It’s a good day to stay indoors, and isolation from the world is nothing if not welcome now.
Still, at times like these, it’s hard to believe in the promise of the dragonflies, or any of their cousins, for that matter; hard to believe, indeed, in the coming of warmer winds. Perhaps it’s best not to look too far ahead now, much less to waste time yearning for it; better by far to focus on that which is possible now.
And winter’s last gasp notwithstanding, there is plenty of that. As of our last dusting of snow — it seems so long ago now, with so much that has happened in the intervening days in the outside world, but it was only last week — what showed through the patchy white was still mostly brown, brave shoots of green striving here and there, but by no means overtaking the earth’s surface.
Today, it’s all very different: what is not covered in white is decidedly green, with only patchy remnants of brown still showing around the edges. And even through the dark bands of the gray-white sky, patches of bright blue are clearly visible every now and again. The forecast insists on more snow tomorrow and Saturday, although the percentages are too low to depend upon it, but for most of the first fortnight of spring as the calendar declares it, milder weather will have returned.
Given our themes this week, the greens of the warmer days to come combines with the deep blues of the storm, I was reminded that I had not yet featured in this space one of my favorite pairs of earrings made specially for me by Wings. They are built around some of the most spectacular specimens of azurite in malachite that either of us has ever seen, acquired, as I recall, from a dear friend who regularly scouts stones that he thinks Wings might like. This pair dates back, if memory serves, some five years or so, and while I fell in love with the stones on sight, I never expected that the resulting earrings would be made for me. Wings made them in secret and presented them to me when they were complete, saying that given the colors, the mysterious whorls of cobalt and violet and midnight banded with shades of emerald and jade, they were obviously meant to go nowhere but to me. [They are my favorite colors, and indeed, favorite shades thereof, the deep, intense jewel tones that are so hard to find, and Wings of course knew that.]
And this pair, of course, began with the stones.
For earring cabochons of this size, Wings very often lets the stones do the speaking, electing only to set them in bezels and edge them in twisted silver. The reasoning is two-fold: First, such phenomenal gems don’t need a great deal of silverwork to enhance them; too often, the contrary result occurs, in which too much busy metalwork actually detracts from the beauty of the stones. Second, these were substantial cabs, in size and depth, a little over an inch in length, about three-quarters of an inch across at the widest point, and more than a quarter of an inch deep; adding too much silver would make them too heavy to wear.
So, in keeping with his approach, we’ll begin this description with the stones, as well. Azurite, both by itself and as it more usually manifests, as azurite in malachite, was one of the features in our Jewels and Gems series, which occupied this space on Tuesdays some five years ago. Rather than rewrite and mostly repeat myself anyway, I’ll let my words from that post explain both what azurite is and how it co-occurs with malachite. First, the technical and geological background:
[A]zurite [is] a beautiful marbled royal blue. It does present by itself, as plain azurite, and the etymology of the stone’s given name is obvious. But azurite most frequently manifests in a compound-mineral form, in conjunction with another gem we’ve covered here already: malachite. This is the form of azurite that, whether due to accessibility or simply an imposed market “preference,” has become the most common form used in jewelry and gemwork. It’s easy to see why: The intensely brilliant shades of green and blue, swirled together in one opaque stone, make for a gemstone that is both incredibly novel and yet very familiar. [There is also a third form of azurite, known colloquially as “Bluebird” for its deep-red cuprite matrix, resembling a bluebird’s combination of indigo and rusty-red feathers; this is the rarest form of azurite.]
. . .
Azurite is a secondary copper mineral, commonly found in copper deposits around the world. As we’ve noted here before, it’s another of the minerals that’s been extracted alongside turquoise at Bisbee’s famed copper mines. Azurite and malachite are the two basic copper carbonate minerals, formed over eons as deposits of copper ore slowly weather and oxidize. It’s why the two occur together so frequently. Malachite might be said to be the stronger, more dominant of the two minerals: Azurite is a very soft stone, disintegrates under high heat, and is less stable in open air than malachite is, which allows malachite to overtake it via a process we’ve discussed here many times, pseudomorphism. This is the means by which the malachite inclusions make their way into the azurite host (and, given just the right conditions and enough time, it can overtake it completely, creating a complete malachite pseudomorph of the original azurite). Under certain specific conditions, the two can combine in such as way as to form a single double-terminated crystal, one that is deep blue azurite on one end and bright green malachite on the other. Most often, however, azurite manifests in combination with malachite in a blocky, patchy pattern swirled together . . . .
Most azurite, though, manifests in shades closer to royal blue. It’s rare that we’ve seen specimens, particularly in combination with malachite, that occur in these deep violet-blue shades that evoke the colors of ultra-high-grade lapis lazuli. Malachite, on the other hand, tends to run the gamut of bright greens, from soft spring shades like the center of the bands here to brilliant polished emerald to forest greens and even the deep teal blue-greens of raw emerald nuggets you see at the edges.
At this point, you might have noticed a family resemblance outside of simple color in the description immediately above. In describing azurite, I invoked lapis lazuli, and, indeed, outside of the “azu” syllables in common, the etymological roots of both are the same:
The name of the gemstone we call azurite ultimately comes from the same root as the name of another deep blue gemstone, lapis lazuli. Although we now tend to refer to the latter stone simply the first half of its name, lapis, that’s actually the least descriptive part of its name: Various sources identify it as nothing more than the Latin word for “stone.” The relevant part of the name is the second half, lazuli, which reportedly ultimately derives from the ancient Persian region known as Lazhward, where large deposits of lapis lazuli were mined. Eventually, via the colonizing, co-opting, and intermingling processes that influence changes in language, the Lazhward root was filtered through Arabic and eventually European tongues to arrive at azure — and thus, at azurite.
And, perhaps predictably, human nature being what it is, azurite has long done double duty as fraudulent “lapis.” Part of the reason, of course, is that lapis lazuli, in the deep blues of its high-grade form, is spectacularly costly. But azurite, while softer and less sturdy and thus less valuable in gemological terms, is possessed of its own deep and mysterious beauty that can stand wholly on its own, without comparison or contrast to other blue gems.
I have no idea now, if indeed I ever knew, the retail cost of this matched pair of earring cabochons. I do know that they are formed of high-grade, exceptionally high-quality stone. I also know that they were cabbed naturally, without resort to fillers or dyes or other treatments; if you closely at the photo above, you’ll see the pits and divots and tiny holes across the surface that are characteristic of untreated stones. Under a lens, you can see by way of those holes that the color goes down through the cab; when a cabochon is dyed, it rests near the top. And the whorled banding that looks so much like rivers and ripples and clouds formations is, I can only conclude, the result of water including into the host rock as the azurite and malachite formed over time via processes of inclusion and compression. They manifest in the most beautiful of the shades of a summer’s earth and water and sky, a gift of past and future all in one.
As I said above, for such stones, Wings wanted to keep it simple: plain bezels and backing with twisted silver edging. He traced the outer edges of the stones, then curt the silver, freehand, a millimeter or two beyond that line, just enough space to hold the edging. His one concession of sorts with regard to the bezel was to create a scalloped bezel. He often uses this technique with stones that are highly domed, and/or that include spectacular natural patterns. The scalloped edge work alternates high and low points around the bezel, which means that it holds it securely while still allowing as much of the stone as possible to show unimpeded. Once the bezels and backing were soldered together, he edged them in twisted silver. At this point, all that remained was to add a jump ring to the upper back of each setting, buff them to a medium polish, attach the sterling silver earring wires via a second pair of jump rings, and then set the stones.
These were a surprise gift, one that I did not realize he had in process (and if I had, I would have assumed it was for inventory and sale). They have become one of my favorite pairs of earrings, wearable with virtually all of the blues and greens in my wardrobe. The stones are artwork of a most ancient sort, the settings contemporary art . . .and they allow me to wear gifts of the future, shades of summer, in every season.
~ 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.
