It’s another hazy day, courtesy of the giant prescribed burn to the west. We also have an added dulling of the light from the the high thin clouds, mostly mares’ tails drifting in slow consolidation, that have turned much of the sky white. The breeze is steady; the air warm but with an edge to it now.
And the forecast predicts rain for Saturday. It’s unexpected at this time of year, but then again, it’s also the feast day — and the trickster spirits do love such opportunities for sowing chaos and caprice.
This week, we have been visited by a very different kind of spirit: messengers, the kind that more powerful beings entrust with the kind of wisdom we need to hear and heed [even if the outside world steadfastly refuses to do either]. We have had, in particular, one butterfly and one dragonfly, both giving the impression that they are searching for something. In truth, they probably are, trying to stock up on fuel for the long migratory journey ahead, and doing so in what they instinctively know to be one of the few safe spaces always available to them. But the frequency with which they have appeared — indeed, I’ve seen them both more often since the weekend than over the rest of the warmer months combined — and their unusual proximity also suggests that they have a message to impart before they go.
We know well to pay attention now.
They seem so fragile, these tiny messengers of the light. But our traditions are filled with stories of power entrusted to humble beings, a reminder that all have value, and all have a role to play in communal efforts.
Speaking of traditions, this week’s #ThrowbackThursday featured work embodies just such a messenger and message, such an identity and animating spirit. It’s one in Wings’s long-running but intermittent signature series of dragonflies necklaces and pendants, all wrought in the same general style, but each unique. This one, as it happens, is especially apt for this week: Not only does its body catch the silvery light and its eyes seem to glow with sunset fire, but its name happened to be Tradition’s Keeper. I no longer recall who the purchaser was, but this particular iteration is a throwback to more than a decade ago: possibly as early as 2009 and as late as 2013, but if I had to guess, I’d say a dozen years ago, in 2011.
Wings created all of these dragonflies using heavy-gauge sterling silver triangle “wire” for their bodies. The gauges differed slightly, probably mostly around four-gauge, which is solid, substantive, and carries some metaphorical weight as well. Lengths varied a little, none shorter than 1.5″ long and none longer than 2.5″, if memory serves. He always scored the body freehand, filing grooves deeply into its surface, wrapping them all the way around the triangle; if you look closely at the image above, you’ll see the displacement of the silver at the outer edge. The cutwork was, of course, meant to evoke the segmented nature of Dragonfly’s body, but only symbolically, and each was always different: here, five parrallel lines on the slightest of diagonals at the midpoint, three set close together and flanked by one set a bit further apart at either end, coupled with a pair of perfectly straight parallel lines halfway between those and the end.
The end, too, was part of the creative process. Wings always cut them into points, longer at the top and shorter on the underside, as here. The length and sharpness varied among them, of course. So, too, did the bails: Sometimes he would cut the triangle wire longer than what he intended to use for the small wingéd spirit itself, leaving a section at the top end to be first hammered flat, then shaped into a perfect loop to form an organic bail. On other occasions, he would cut the wire exactly to size, then fashion a wholly separate bail and solder it to the top — which, it appears, is what he did here, although it’s difficult to tell. This is, unfortunately, the only shot I have of this particular work, and thus only the one perspective on it. Here, he fashioned two tiny round bezels just beneath the bal at the top of the triangle wire, one on either side of the apex; these would hold the stones that would form its outsized eyes [have you ever actually looked at a dragonfly’s (or damselfly’s) eyes? they’re enormous].
The wings were another matter entirely.
Dragonflies possess dual wings on either side (part of what permits them to dart in all directions and to hover as needed), and so he needed to create four in total. For these pieces, he typically formed all four out of a single sheet of silver, each wings cut laboriously freehand on the upper and lower edges, around the arc of each end, and up very nearly to center.
Nearly.
He kept them conjoined at the very center, a single piece of silver, and so the saw-work to separate those above and below each other on either side was painstaking, delicate work. The cuts did not go as far toward the center as they appear here: About a quarter of an inch from the body on either side, it’s not a cut but a deep, deep line scored into the silver at an angle to simulate separation.
Before the cutwork, though, would come the stampwork. He typically chose a single stamp to create the lacy, webbed appearance of their veined translucent wings, then repeated it over and over in a given pattern to reproduce that effect. In this instance, he selected a single line stamp, one whose end was carved in several identical tiny points, saw-tooth-like serration points joined at the bottom (if memory serves, there are four points on the stamp). He turned it sideways, so that the line was vertical and the point aimed toward the horizontal, then repeated it over and over, up and down the length and height of the area that would form the pair of wings on the first side. When that was complete, he flipped the stamp so that the point aimed outward in the opposite direction, and did the same to that side. Only then, once the wispy veined look had been created through such repeated microstamping, did he begin the cutwork, excising the four articulated wings in one single piece. Then he soldered them carefully to the underside of the upper half of the body.
For this piece, he oxidized the wings and the body, deeper in the latter to fill the filed grooves properly, then buffed the body to a medium-high polish and the wings to a shine just a little brighter than Florentine. He formed a necklace of sterling silver snake chain [a descriptor that refers to the tightly coiled design of the links), then strung it through the bail. And he set the bezels with a pair of fiery round garnets, each a deep translucent shade of scarlet, so clear and mysterious that they could simultaneously refract the light and pull you into their depths.
With the smoke here, the eyes of this one were the same shade as last night’s sunset sky, an even deeper red than the newly-turned leaves of fire maple and woodbine.
I have seen a butterfly spiral past the window in the last few moments; the dragonfly has not yet shown itself. Perhaps it feels its work is done, and has already headed along its migratory path. This year, though, we know that its messages are cautionary, and we know that they must be heeded — the warnings and wisdom of these tiny messengers of the light.
~ Aji
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