Today, we continue our exploration of themes begun on Wednesday, through the lens of Wings’s work. This week’s choices are a bit different, in that there’s a purity of medium not present in other weekly series: Every piece highlighted this week (including the one we’ll bring you tomorrow) is solid sterling silver, unadorned by any other material. No gemstones, precious little stampwork, simply forming and shaping the metal to create something new and beautiful out of a plain piece of polished ore.
There are other common threads, too. Most obvious, of course, is the fact that today’s piece appears to be identical to Wednesday’s.
It’s not. Wings never duplicates pieces exactly anyway, but there is one significant structural difference between the one featured Wednesday and today’s work. Both are made of hand-rolled triangle wire of solid sterling silver. Both began life as the same gauge, weight, and width, although today’s piece appears narrower.
Why?
Look closely at the edges of the band on each one. On the Tributaries cuff highlighted here a few days ago, he rolled the silver in such a way as to emphasize the center peak alone, flattening out the metal on either side into smooth, silken edges. On today’s cuff, he rolled the metal in a more complex pattern, with a similar central peak, yes, but also rolling up each edge into its own smaller, more subtle peak. It’s the effect that gave the piece its name, mirroring, as it does, our own peaks that stand guard over us here. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Winter’s Ridge Cuff Bracelet
The Pueblo’s own peaks manifest in miniature in this slender silver cuff that evokes the northern ridgeline. Hand-rolled over heavy-gauge sterling silver triangle wire to create a mirrored effect, the band’s central summit slopes down into deep valleys that, like their real-life counterparts, yet rise again into lower ridges on either side. The subtle Florentine finish shimmers like the slopes’ snows in the winter light. Another view shown below.
Sterling silver
$475 + shipping, handling, and insurance
But the similarities are symbolic as well as tangible. On Wednesday, we looked at water as a synthesizing image, a motif we’ve explored since. It’s a topic that’s always timely here in this high desert land, but especially so this time of year, as we measure the winter’s runoff with equal parts apprehension and appreciation, guesswork and gratitude. It’s the time just before the planting season, the planning season, when we plot irrigation schedules and timing, preparing the ditches and tilling the soil and readying everything for the moment when it will be time to put the seeds into the ground. And the very recognition of the runoff itself, the fact that we live in a place where there is snowpack and melt, brings together the tripartite imagery of the two pieces, merging metaphorical tributaries of peaks and valleys and fast-running waters into a greater whole that is, simply, life.
Because, as we know so well (and the dominant culture is perhaps beginning to learn):
WATER IS LIFE.
~ Aji
All content, including photos and text, are copyright Wings and Aji, 2015; all rights reserved. Nothing herein may used or reproduced in any form without the express written permission of the owners.
