We’ve spent the past week immersed in the colors of early winter: bare soil and bright snow, icy air and stormy skies. In the world outside the window, most of the week has been devoted to unseasonably warm weather, temperate winds and highs approaching sixty degrees, the product of an El Niño system driven to new strength by climate change.
Pleasant as the recent weather has been, it’s not actually a good thing. We are put in the unusual position of praying for cold, for weather enough to bring the snow, because our snowfall at this time of year determines the health of the land next summer.
Looking out the window, it feels as though our week’s focus on the shape and shade of winter has served as an invocation, a summoning: The snow is here at last.
Yesterday dawned foggy and unusually warm, the ground damp from the last night’s rain, but nothing more. By noon, an inch of heavy wet snow had fallen. We are now up to some four inches of accumulation, and the snow has altered: cold, dry, small steady flakes visible in the air against a world in which earth and sky are the same unbroken shade of white.
On such a day, it seems the perfect time to close out our current Wednesday/Weekend series devoted to Wings’s own work with pieces that overtly invoke the snow itself, made of stone that bears the snow’s own name, incorporated into works themselves named for the burning cold of ice.
It is one of Wings’s collections in miniature, a pair of works that were not designed expressly to match, but were nonetheless created to complement each other, to bring together the spirits of fire and ice by way of silver and snowflake obsidian and the scarlet flame of garnet. It consists of a cuff bracelet and a ring, either fully able to stand alone, but even more beautiful when paired.
We begin with the cuff. From its description in the Bracelets Gallery here on the site:
Fire and Ice Cuff Bracelet
In the interstices inhabited by the elemental powers, Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, bringing them to life in our world, their full strength and power yet held back: a reminder that if we are careful, we may use their gifts rather than be consumed by them. Here, Spirit’s Eye traces the length of the band of this heavy-gauge cuff, accented on all sides by traditional symbols. At the center, two fiery garnet cabochons flank three larger oval stones: snowflake obsidian, representations of ice born naturally of the union of earth and heat and flame. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice solitaire ring in the Rings Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian; garnet
$725 + shipping, handling, and insurance
The band of the cuff even looks cool and icy, polished to a high gloss, yet retaining a very slight patina that softens its appearance and feel. The garnet cabochons, like pools of molten flame, liquid and deep, set off the obsidian’s snowy domes, bringing them into sharp relief against the silver. Paired with the ring, it extends the elemental beauty from wrist to fingertips.
The ring, of course, can easily stand on its own, too: Its design is complementary but not identical. From its description in the Rings Gallery:
Fire and Ice Solitaire Ring
In the interstices between worlds, the spirits and elemental forces afford us an occasional glimpse but do not admit us entry, lest we be consumed by their power. Yet Spirit catalyzes fire and ice, as in this solitaire, where earth and flame join to create a stone named for water frozen by the winter air. Conjoined lodge symbols trace the length of the band; the snowflake obsidian cabochon rests in a scalloped bezel. Top view shown below. Companion piece to the Fire and Ice cuff bracelet in the Bracelets Gallery.
Sterling silver; snowflake obsidian
$325 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Together, they evoke the great beauty of the winter spirits, their force harnessed by the protection of spiritual power and medicine.
On a day such as the one that has dawned in this place, they seem like a tribute to the earth itself, wrapped in the beauty of winter’s blanket.
~ 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 owner.
