Today’s featured work is an old one, a throwback to nine or ten years ago. It’s a pair of earrings that were a bit of departure from Wings’s usual style, and they sold so long ago that their name escapes now, if, indeed, they ever had one.
They were hoops of tiny jewels.
They were actually fairly sizeable, about two inches long, if memory serves. The style was deceptively simple in appearance, and while they were not precisely difficult to make, they were time-consuming; fine detail work of this nature requires meticulous attention and equally fine smithing skills.
And I’m not entirely sure why, but they always made me think of love.
Perhaps it was the presence of the purple and white gemstones, both ancillary colors for Valentine’s Day, for hearts and flowers, for those weary of the day’s unending sea of red. Perhaps it had more to do with a different sort of love, that between us and Mother Earth, because combined with the brilliant spring green stones, they also always made me think of rings of flowers.
Perhaps it was something entirely unnameable, indefinable, but no less there for that.
Even today, looking at the photo, they make me think of spring blossoms, welcome after last week’s bitterly deep cold. And this week, it’s been possible to believe in the promise of spring, with highs nearing sixty the last couple of days and the requisite mud everywhere. Of course, we know it’s a false promise in February; there is much of winter ahead of us yet. But at the moment, looking at these, I feel the warmer winds of memory and the imagined scent of bright petals.
As I said, they were simple in design, but detailed in execution. Wings began with what’s known as “bead wire”: a solid strand of sterling silver, thin enough to be flexible, that has been melted and poured into a commercial mold whose shape resembles a strand of tiny round beads strung together. In effect, it looks much like the sort of round connected beads on which military dog tags are often hung — except made with larger, heavier, solid sterling silver beads. One he had cut two strands of the proper length, he gently bent each into a teardrop shape, soldering them together at the narrow end.
Next, he chose twenty-four small round cabochons of identical size — two amethyst; four peridot; and six moonstone— and accompanying bezels for each. He then soldered each plain bezel into place, one dozen per earring, beginning with a single bezel at the narrow top end. He then alternated between single “beads” and bezels, soldering each in succession so that between each bezel a single “bead” of the bead wire would show. Finally, he attached a jump ring to the top of each at the narrow end and hung them from wires.
Then he turned to the stones.
The stones were, roughly speaking, purple, green, and white — an unlikely combination, perhaps, especially for Native jewelry. They have all always seemed distinctly feminine to me, even moreso in combination: amethyst, the color of dusky skies and tiny asters; peridot, the color of the Earth herself in spring’s blanket; and moonstone, our Grandmother’s own gemstone. And it is perhaps these very associations — the romance of night, of life renewed, of maternal motifs — that made me always think of these as small hoops of love.
Wings began with the amethyst, placing one in the solitary bezel at the top of each earring, and one in the center bezel at the bottom that hung slightly below all the rest. Then, on either side, he alternated the moonstone with the peridot, so that no identical gems rested next to each other.
The effect, with such a collection of two translucent gems and one adularescent one, was of tiny hoops of light . . . or, perhaps, given their teardrop shape, of the tears of the spirits we call raindrops.
If the latter, I think they must be tears of joy. In a place where the truth that water is life has always been known, both rain and light are gifts of the spirits.
That’s an expression of love for us all.
~ Aji
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