Wings typically works to create pieces that anyone can wear anytime, anywhere. A lot of Southwestern Native jewelry adheres to a very specific style, big, bold pieces that are instantly recognizeable . . . and just as instantly relegated, by a lot of the country, to a very narrow space — compartmentalized, as “artifacts” of Native culture, as commodities to be collected, as items to be worn only in very specific and very limited contexts.
That’s fine, as far as it goes, but Wings has always understood that clients who pay good value for his work want to be able to wear it consistently, not only on those rare occasions when a public event is staged with a “Cowboys and Indians” theme. His own work hews solidly to traditional motifs and an equally traditional spirit, but he has always made a concerted effort to meld those themes with a style that clients the world over can feel comfortable wearing virtually anywhere.
Even now and then, though, he creates a work that is so thoroughly Native that its essential identity transcends all other aspects of the piece.
Such was the case with today’s featured work, one that sold eight years ago to a client of long standing who is also now a dear friend.
The cuff itself was classic Southwest Native style: big, bold, solid, heavy. It was a unisex design, wide and substantial enough to appeal to most men, but still flexible enough for a woman to carry off the look with ease.
He began the accent work by hand-scoring a single line a few millimeters inside either edge to serve as a border. Within each line, he placed a chased row of stair-stepped motifs that, viewed narrow end down, are often used to symbolize thunderheads; when viewed wide end down, they evoke the kiva steps of his people’s sacred space. It was meticulous, labor-intensive detail work, the sort that requires time, care, and attention, great skill and a steady hand.
Once the borders were complete, he scattered half-moon symbols in varying sizes across its surface. Then, he aded an overlay to the center at either end: a pair of five-pointed stars of differing sizes, each stamped with a smaller five-pointed star at the center. All of the scoring and stampwork were unusually deep, as such a heavy piece of silver required. At this point, the design was might have been considered complete; it was a beautifully indigenous representation of sky symbols and spirits.
But Wings had a specific purpose in mind for this particular cuff. He cut a ledger horse free-hand out of sheet silver, with articulated hooves and fetlocks and a flowing mane and tail that imbued it with a graceful sense of motion. He then stamped a single eye on the horse’s face, hand-scored lines across its muzzle, and then added traditional symbols of sky and spirit across its body: star, moons, lightning, an Eye of Spirit on the tail. It was a horse in the classic ledger style, accented with signifiers of medicine and power, racing headlong at full gallop across the space between worlds.
The friend who bought it is, like us, a horse person. When she visited us on that day in 2008, she was on vacation with her husband, hard on the heels of having just lost her own horse to a deadly case of colic. She was taken with the design, but as she began to explain to us its significance to her, the tears overtook her. It’s the kind of loss we know too well, and I came around from behind the counter to give her a hug and cry with her. Wings walked over to the case, removed on of his Spirit Horse pins, and pinned it to her lapel as a gift in memory of her horse. She now wears this cuff along with several others by Wings, but this one is special, a tribute to her beloved four-legged family member.
Wings has created many horses in many forms over the years, including this ledger horse style wrought in an overlay design: cuffs, necklaces, pins, belt buckles, collectibles. Of them all, this one, to me, is the most essentially indigenous, the one truest to the spirit of the Indian horse.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2016; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
