After two days of unseasonal cold and bitter winds, today is all hot blue skies and a warm close haze. The latter is a result of the pollen that still bedevils us, along with trailing smoke from a fire just north of El Rito, but it feels as though summer temperatures have returned.
And if the forecast holds, tomorrow will bring the return of a little of the summer rains, as well.
We know better, of course, than to bank on that last hope. Beyond tomorrow, the extended forecast remains arid and bleak, save for three days in the last week of the month. This is not summer as we know it, but it’s what we have, and so even the smallest amount of precipitation assumes a value of outsized proportions now.
But the prospect of rain, of a fall of shimmering bands of water, put me in mind of this week’s featured throwback work, one that dates back almost two and a half years exactly. It’s a pair of earrings that are the very embodiment of water and light, a pair whose genesis lay in a would-be commission from a dear friend. Wings elected to make a gift of them to her instead.
And this pair began not with the silver, not with the stones, but with another work entirely.
It was a cuff bracelet called The Waters that birthed the earrings featured here today, in much the same way as more ordinary waters birth us all. That cuff was an extraordinary mix of hammered silver and freehand overlay work, with three stunning cabochons at the center: a larger oval of sky-blue Colorado Evans turquoise with a rich host-rock texture and coppery-red matrix, flanked by two highly-domed smaller cabochons of the newer material coming from Arizona’s Turquoise Mountain Mine in recent years, intense teal blues and emerald greens marbled with patches of bronzed browns and wisps of white. Our friend fell in love with the cuff and purchased it, Wings resizing the ends slightly to fit her wrist more closely.
A few months later, she contacted me to inquire about the possibility of commission a pair of earrings to match. She liked the idea of earrings that dangled a bit, and she was particularly fond of the hammered-silver effect of the bracelet’s band. Beyond those two preferences, she wanted turquoise stones that would more closely capture the intense hues of the two Turquoise Mountain cabochons in the cuff; they didn’t need to be a perfect match, just brilliant jewel-toned turquoise that would pick up the colors in the bracelet’s stones.
And it turned out that Wings had the perfect stones in his inventory.
In point of fact, he had two sets of earring pairs that appeared to drawn from the same deposit: both slightly free-form, imperfect sets of ovals, one small pair and the other the medium-sized pair shown here. They were labeled, if memory serves, only as “natural Nevada turquoise,” but we believe they came from Pilot Mountain; the clear, intense shades of sky blue faintly marbled with white, with a patchy matrix in shades of brown with hints of green and limned in an inky purple are all telltale markers of Pilot Mountain material. I photographed both pairs next to a ruler for scale and sent her the images, and the larger ones proved to fit the image in her mind.
Stones selected, Wings set to work about designing the pair. Mindful of her desire for hammered silver and a dangling effect, he set about cutting, freehand, two pendants from lightweight sterling silver, each sized proportionally to the width and length of the stones. He kept each slender and straight, save for an organic tab at one end that would attach them to the stones and a simple arc at the other end that would form the bottom of each pendant. He filed the edges smooth and hammered the surface gently to create an effect much like the shimmering surface of water in the light, then turned his attention to the pair of cabochons.
As I noted in passing above, despite the fact that these appear to be matched ovals, they’re actually slightly free-form: not calibrated, not filed to match each other perfectly; instead, the lapidary work follows the natural, and slightly uneven, lines of the stones. In such cases, such “imperfections’ (and they’re not, not really; to our mind, the natural forms are the more valuable ones by definition, and they are testament to the fact that neither cabs nor earrings are commercially mass-produced) appear to vanish once the stones are set into bezels.
In this instance, Wings fashioned saw-toothed bezels for these stones. They were not especially highly domed, and the serrated edging helps to expose (and seemingly elevate) as much of the gem’s surface as possible while holding it securely in place. He created the backing for each bezel with a tiny drilled tab extending organically from top and bottom; these would be used to attach the earring wires at the top and the pendants at the bottom. He then edged each bezel with a slender strand of twisted silver, to make the brilliant turquoise color of the stones pop, so to speak.
While bezels and pendants were still separate pieces, he oxidized each of them, paying particular attention to the join between twisted silver and bezel and the hammered surfaces of the pendants. he then buffed them to a medium-high polish, the pendants given an additional shine that would produce the reflective effects on their surfaces. And reflective they were, indeed: Turquoise is known here as the Skystone, bits of the blue sky fallen as rain and hardened by the heat of the earth into a protective jewel, and here it seemed to deliver a cascade, shimmering bands of water, and of light. All that remained was to set the stones, attach wires and pendants, bless them and give them one final buffing by hand, and send them to our friend.
Wings has created countless pairs of earrings to order over the years, both commissioned works and gifts. A few stand out as personal favorites for their beauty and power. This is one. For now, we hope they are bringing our friend joy and all the abundance they symbolize.
And perhaps maybe, just maybe, this acknowledgment of that power will induce the rains to come to us, as well.
~ 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.
