Flurries.
We have flurries, heavy cloud cover, rare shafts of sun, and a thaw that is turning the earth to mud.
It’s barely cold enough for the few snowflakes we’re getting. And while the weather experts tell us that it’s 36 at this moment, the actual mercury, sited in the shade, begs to differ: It’s 41. Yes, it’s better than yesterday’s 52, but it’s still a full twenty degrees too warm, which goes far to explain the lack of real snow, never mind the April-like thaw.
The sky is webbed with a mix of clouds in all colors and dove-gray fog hanging low to enfold the peaks. Hints of silver backlight the former and occasionally manage to filter through . . . until the next collision of stormclouds, coalescing into the darkening blues of slate and dusky violet. It’s winter’s stormy sweetgrass sky, colors and shapes and strands braided together, but air and earth are not able to reap its benefits.
The braid that holds our world in its place, entwines it with the elemental spirits that keep it alive, is coming unraveled . . . in danger of breaking apart entirely.
And still we hope. We pray, we worry, we work to counteract the catastrophic effects no longer looming, but already here.
The latter three of those acts are not actually dependent on the first, but having hope certainly helps to sustain one’s commitment. And of the four, it’s perhaps the hardest come-by now.
Today’s featured work, built around an extraordinary gift of the same earth, embodies this hope — and the fruits that result when hope is braided firmly into its place with the work, with love and strength and courage and community. From its description in the relevant section of the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Sweetgrass Sky Cuff Bracelet
We live beneath the braided hoop of a sweetgrass sky, flowering blue and scented with the smoke from our prayers. Wings summons the symbolism of them all into a hoop of Skystone and silver with this cuff, an extraordinary arc of paired and braided sterling pattern wire set with an outsized cabochon of finely webbed turquoise in the embrace of ingot blossoms created by hand. The band is formed by two separate strands of heavy-gauge pattern wire in a scored design with a geometric Art Deco feel, the lines criss-crossed with ribbons that create a braided effect. The strands are soldered together at either end, then gently spread apart by hand to create the separation at center that holds the focal setting in perfect balance. The cabochon is a specimen of ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise of incredible size, the inky matrix underlit with faints hints of red webbing throughout. It rests in a scalloped bezel trimmed with twisted silver, flowering at top and bottom like the buds of the fresh sweetgrass plant — four hand-made sterling silver ingot blossoms, for a total of eight blooms altogether. Band is 6″ long by 1-1/8″ across at the widest (center) point; each strand of the band is 5/16″ across; focal setting is 1-7/8″ long by 1-1/16″ across; cabochon is 1-1/8″ long by 7/8″ across; ingot stars are each 1/4″ across (all dimensions approximate). Other views shown above, below, and at the link.
Sterling silver; ultra-high-grade Black Web Kingman turquoise
$1,675 + shipping, handling and insurance
This cabochon, one of a small parcel of ultra-high-grade stones of its kind that Wings acquired a decade and a half ago or so, was unusual in its size and in the way that it was finished: a giant rectangle, outsized compared to most of its kind, with virtually no surface doming at all — nearly flat, in fact, but with corners still beveled and the material hard and bright.
The rich intense blue of the stone’s color is matched by the ultra-fine spiderwebbing of the matrix, inky black and blue-black in fine, tight traceries that dance here and there with tiny patches of shimmering silvery pyrite. But that same fine webbing has the capacity to fracture in less solid stones, and to find a specimen so big and bright and unmarred, so perfectly suited to its setting, is remarkable now.
And the setting for it is perfect: one that allows the stone to speak, yet frames it beautifully so that the silverwork enhances it, rather than distracts from it.
The bezel is hand-made, gently saw-cut in a pattern that lies somewhere between serration and scallops, then edged in twisted silver. But it’s the backing that makes it, a single large rectangle extended top and bottom, both of those edges saw-cut freehand in their own scalloped pattern, following the arc of the eight ingot blossoms that would eventually overlay them. Each of them was wrought by hand, as well: molten sterling silver ingot allowed to bead into tiny round orbs, then stamped from the reverse using repoussé techniques to allow the sunburst shape, like the radiating lines of the petals of sweetgrass blossoms in full flower, to rise in sharp relief. It’s a subtle accent, but a powerful one, a design that ties together the power of sky and storm with what grows from the earth to become medicine.
For such a focal, Wings needed a band that would suit its spirit, and he chose wisely. Using heavy-gauge sterling silver pattern wire in an understated geometric design with a distinctly Art Deco feel to it, he fashioned slender twinned bands, saw-cut, rounded, and filed smooth, fused seamlessly together at their ends and spread gently apart at the center to hold the bezel. The pattern wire is molded in a raised design of scored parallel lines and rows, with a braid-like criss-crossing motif atop it at evenly spaced intervals. It, too, evokes the look and feel of a sweetgrass braid, tightly woven, stronger for it, and capable of producing medicine at once delicate and extraordinarily powerful.
Sweetgrass is well named; its scent, when burned, is indeed sweet, at once mild and beautiful. It’s distinctive, but also subtle — a bit, perhaps, like the scent of snow upon the wind: Not everyone will recognize it, but those who know it will do so instantly. And despite the too-warm temperatures, despite the intermittent appearance of the sun, there remains the scent of snow in the air this day.
This is the gift of winter’s stormy sweetgrass sky . . . and it is enough, perhaps, for hope.
~ 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.
