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Marian Crane - Phoenix in Flight
Category: Body Adornment.
Stitches used include: Flat and tubular peyote, right angle weave, and fringe.
The myth of the Phoenix is known to many cultures. Ancient Egypt had the Bennu-bird, the plume-crowned heron that discovered the first island in the primordial ocean. From China came the pheasant-like Feng, symbol of Empresses, immortality, and prosperity. The Greek historian Herodotus gave the modern world a fable about a scarlet and golden bird that roosted near a magical well in Arabia, lived for hundreds or even thousands of years, and was reborn from its own ashes after being consumed in fire. To medieval alchemists, the Phoenix was a symbol of the Philosopher’s Stone, a substance able to transmute base metal into gold, grant immortality, and reveal the quintessential laws of creation. Early Christians believed the Phoenix’s cycle of life and death made it a symbol of Jesus’ resurrection.
I chose a mix of forms for this necklace: the pheasant head and trailing tail-plumes of the Feng, an Egyptian-style collar for the necklace, and motifs suggesting the connection of fire and water in the various myths.
This is the ‘Phoenix in Flight’, shaking off the ashes of the past and soaring into a wonderful future: in these troubled times, my own hope for the new millennium.