Suddenly there are hints in the forecast for a possible Christmas gift of snow showers.

We know better than to believe it unless and until it actually occurs, but for now, it’s a nice thought. And hope is a stubborn thing.

I walked out onto the deck this morning, and would have sworn it was spring. Despite the mercury’s reading, the sun was absurdly warm, the air warm, too, filled with the songs of birds that should not be here for six months yet, and with that faint scent upon the breeze that tells us summer is not far off now.

It’s the middle of December, past the midpoint, actually, and real winter should just be settling in for the long haul.

We are still learning how to navigate this new reality, one in which our world looks nothing like it should, and one that we know is badly wounded by the conditions that cause this drastic change. Where the peaks and slopes should be covered in white, they are instead a mix of evergreen and far too much bare brown earth showing through, punctuated here and there with stands of gray limbs and trunks. The land here should be white, for that matter, covered in snow; the pond, empty for years now, should be filled with at least some water, and rimed with ice.

It’s not just our pond ad ditches that are without water now. All of the watersheds are plagued by dangerously low levels. There are new sandbars throughout the center of the Río Grandé, riverbed visible through what used to be forbidding depths. The lakes and streams are suffering similarly, and if this drought doesn’t relax its deathgrip soon, this whole region will be in trouble come actual spring.

We navigate life here by the natural world, by earth and sky, waters and light, but the world they together comprise is fast becoming unrecognizeable; so, too, are these markers themselves. We are having to learn new ways of both understanding our world and reckoning our path through it, doing so simultaneously and on the fly, and such a process is necessarily riddled with error and uncertainty.

And yet, these suddenly-unfamiliar guides are teaching us in real time, as well. Even now, they are showing us the shifts in the path’s directions as we walk it, and it becomes our task to learn how to evolve and adapt accordingly.

This week’s #ThrowbackThursday featured work is one that seems to embody the guiding forces of the waters and the light, but it is also, very much in an ironic sense, a manifestation of human error along the way [mine, to be precise]. This #TBT work, a hair cuff commissioned by a dear friend, dates back only to late August of this year, some four months ago. And it’s a beautiful piece, one that was flawlessly executed by Wings, albeit not quite right for its intended purpose [and that is why my error comes into play].

First, though, the work itself: Earlier that month, Wings had created this cuff, featuring an extraordinary Skystone set atop a slender hammered silver band. It was a work whose name and spirit make clear its relationship to the water, one that’s really unmistakeable anyway, given the blues of the stone above the band’s shimmering surface. This kind of freehand hammerwork on silver turns the surface into something that looks like lake or river or silvered sea in the full light of the sun, and it’s beautiful.

Our friend regularly wears hair cuffs, which are exactly wha they sound like: cuff-shaped pieces of precious metal bent into steep arcs, adorned however the maker chooses, with a vertical pick soldered securely to the inner arc. They’re designed to hold a ponytail or braid or large lock of hair, the holder wrapping around both the pick and the hair, and the front arc of the cuff placed over it, facing forward. It adds a pop of shimmer and/or color to the hair, without heavy weight or harsh pulling on one’s scalp.

At any rate, our friend saw the cuff and fell in love with the hammered-silver effect. She asked Wings to make her another hair cuff to add to her already-substantial collection, this one solid silver, no stones, and with that shimmering hammered surface that looks like water in the light.

And in case you doubted that it actually does look like that, you can see what I mean in this shot, below, shown from the work’s front angle, where the light on the apex of the cuffs does indeed look like that on the ripples and waves of a body of water:

It’s a stunning effect, and I can understand her attraction to it; I have several pieces of hammered-silver jewelry myself, including the bands of my engagement and wedding rings.

There’s something about it that is ethereal, otherworldly, and yet also timeless. It’s an ancient form of metalsmithing, one of the oldest, and it seems to connect us both to ancient styles and to the even more ancient earth from which the precious metals are drawn. It’s mystery and magic rolled into one, and it’s as breathtakingly simple as it is beautiful.

For this work, Wings needed a rectangle of sterling silver, a decently solid but not heavy gauge, enough substance to hold its shape but not so much that it would weigh down the hair or tip over on the braid. He cut it to size and shape, barely rectangular, almost but not quite square, then laid it flat on his anvil and began the hammer work.

He hammered the entire surface, to all edges and corners — scores, perhaps hundreds of strikes. Once it was complete, the strikes deep enough for a rich texture without showing through unduly on the reverse, he filed the edges smooth and set about shaping it into the steep arc you see above.

At this point, there was still time to correct my error, but we didn’t know yet that it was an error.

You see, when he began this one, he asked me, “How long and wide should it be? About an inch either way, a little more on the long side?” And I, without first going back into the house to find the records of the earlier ones, which run the gamut of styles and stones and sizes, too, responded with misplaced confidence, “Oh, no, I think they’re about two inches long and maybe an inch and three-quarters across.”

And he took my word for it. It’s probably not obvious here, but if you’re familiar with this style of accessory, you can see in the side view above that it’s relatively long. If memory serves, he cut the silver two inches long by about 1.75″ wide . . . and, of course, the hammerwork displaces the silver sideways, so that when it’s complete, it’s a little larger yet.

You can see the interplay of light and shadow in the hammerwork above, too, a richly polished finish with just enough oxidation to give it a warm patina. You can also see here just how steep the arc is. And once that shaping is done, that’s when the pick is added at the center if the inner arc:

For those, Wings typically uses relatively light-weight gauges of sterling silver pattern wire. Such wire comes in a vast array of beautiful designs, and it’s light enough to be folded into a loop at the top for soldering to the inner band, and to be filed to a sharpened point at the tip. For this one, he chose a geometric pattern, one that I think of as “dot/dash,” for its alternating design of concave ovals and deeply scored diagonal lines in between them. It’s an elegant pattern with a slightly Art Deco sensibility, and it’s a secret between the work and the wearer.

Once complete, Wings oxidized the whole, buffed it to a bright finish that preserved the patina, blessed it, and handed it over to me for shipping. And our friend received it in due course.

And that’s when I learned that it was too big.

No matter how well balanced the work might be in the abstract, it’s meant to fit the wearer, not the other way around. And it turned out that, for our friend’s hair at its current length, two inches was too long, and the width also too wide; it didn’t fit closely around the braid as it should have done.

All was not lost; she had a family member who had been admiring her collection of hair cuffs who also had a birthday coming up, and our friend made a birthday gift of it to her. She also subsequently commissioned another, smaller one for herself, one that should in fact be with her imminently.

And I have learned not to rely on my memory, but to double-check actual dimensions.

On this day, there is no standing water here for us to see the light reflected in its surface; we would have to go to the river for that. There is, though, plenty of abundant sunlight, even on these last days when the light grows ever shorter, and it’s possible to see such effects on metal surfaces.

And such reflections can be deceptive — as much so as our own faulty memories. But both the waters and the light are important guides for us now, showing us the shifts in the path’s directions. We would do well to take advantage of such gifts now.

~ Aji

All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2024; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owner.