#chilkat blanket

[arthistoryanimalia]

#WorldOrcaDay:

Chilkat blanket with Orca design, Tsimshian (Pacific NW Coast)

Twined weave; warp of yellow cedar bark & mountain goats' wool, weft of pure mountain goats' wool

Field Museum no. 19571 (photographed on display in 2022)

[omgthatdress]

(Cowichan elder Dora Wilson)

Since it's definitely sweater season, I felt like doing a deep dive into a really unique and interesting bit of knitting history: the Cowichan sweater, sometimes also called the Canadian sweater.

Spinning and weaving among tribes in the Pacific Northwest is something that goes back to pre-colonial times, using wool from domestic dogs and wild mountain goats.

(photo of the now-extinct breed, the Salish Wool Dog)

The wool was then woven into stunningly warm garments and blankets, like the famous chilkat blanket.

(Chilkat Blanket, Saint Louis Art Museum)

With colonization brought the introduction of domestic sheep, which could be reliably herded and used for wool.

It's not entirely clear who introduced knitting to the Cowichan tribe, but it's clear by the early 20th century, an industry had grown up around selling hand-knit sweaters with traditional Native design motifs on them.

[formlines]

Luminance

Robert Mills

from the website: "Luminance brings light to physical spaces as well as various situations and scenarios. This print illustrates how Tlingit Northwest Coastal Art has brought healing to spaces of my life that needed healthy remedies. My hope is that Luminance can bring light to people’s lives where they need it.

Luminance was designed in the style of Naaxein, a ceremonial Chilkat blanket. Traditionally, that blanket was reserved for really highly regarded people. I feel like at this point we are all highly regarded and I want people to feel as such." - Rob Mills

[chiptrillino]

if this is a weird question feel free to ignore but from the design of sokka you made for the chilling in a pond art. is the vest thingie he's wearing a cultural reference to anything or is it just fun character design? it looks really cool so i got curious

there are no weird questions. feel free to ask! thank you

it is mostly a fun character design. as much i like to designs as closley as possible to the original sources and cultural insipirations they had for the show sometimes you just end up making something up when i try to also keep canon a bit in mind.

i know that sokka canonicaly doesn't wear a vest or anything even similar to a vest, but i am alergic to just putting him in a sleaveless wrap shirt and slap some fur on it and call it a day.

nether the less i think my brain does end mixing things toghether that give sort of some vibes back from things i have learned or seen before. we all know and agree that southern water tripe is based an circumpolar people cultures.

i think the fringe are somethin i picked up form parka the singer Shina Novalinga wears in her videos sometimes.

an other source could be Tlingit. their name poppud up a lot when i was researching lamellar armor. they wear this amazing Chilkat blankets with these large fringes. (they are more north west east cost. but they have teritory in alaska and canada) and also... i just like to add shells because... well live near by the ocean, fishing and such.... i like to think they decorate clothing with it because these things are around. also the moon stiching is a giving. i don't think sokka can ever let go of his first love yue

[semtituloh]

Via Native American

Chief Annatlas [Aanyálahaash], wearing a Chilkat blanket and spruce-root hat. 1910

[charring58]

Chilkat weaving is a traditional form of weaving practiced by Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and other Northwest Coast peoples of Alaska and British Columbia. Chilkat robes are worn by high-ranking tribal members on civic or ceremonial occasions, including dances. The blankets are almost always black, white, yellow and blue.

[trop1cal-punk]

My traditional outfit for The CodFather Joktan Seaver from my dnd character Scott major of Rivendell Sìtheach Montague of Aeo Serine’s backstory! More under the cut!!!

(Inspiration taken from coast Salish indigenous people and the blanket is designed after the Chilkat blankets from the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsmshian tribes.)

Reposts are super epic and super appreciated!

[ilikepomegranites]

Why does Indigenous artwork go so hard though?

I swear the tribes of the Pacific Northwest are on the next level when it comes to making something beautiful. Chilkat blankets???? Formline design??? Transformation masks????? they are so incredible it's unbelievable. Picasso can lick the shoes of these people. I had no idea that formline design basically invented visual punning. The use of negative space is out of this world It's amazing how they can keep tradition alive whilst still keeping such an ancient within the present. I love how all the Chilkat robes look SIMILAR but not the SAME. The same style has been passed down generations and through the Indian act and is still being made today!!

How cool is it that people from Tlinkit, Kwakwaka'awkw and Haida tribes can look at a Chilkat robe and literally see their family history spelled out before them in art. 🤩🤩

Now THAT'S heritage!

Go check out Lily Hope she is such a skilled weaver:

[infinite-cancer]

Interior posts of the Grizzly Bear House.

Newcombe recorded in 1906 that these were the posts taken by Jacobsen to Berlin. He states that they supported the large round roof beams and faced the door. Here they are shown just before their removal from Masset, arranged for display with a Chilkat blanket, painted hat, and two daggers that probably belonged to Xa’na. The formal display represented in the photograph is typical of that put on at a chief’s funeral. The Chilkat blanket is draped over a box that may be the coffin box of Xa’na.

[mybeingthere]

Mary Willard (Klukwan), Chilkat Blanketry, 5-3-46. -- Alaska State Library-Historical Collections.

[prairie-tales]

Chilkat blanket.

Region: British Columbia.

The Tlingit word for these traditional Chilkat blankets is Naxein, meaning ‘fringe about the body’. They were made by the women of the tribe from mountain-goat wool, to designs painted by the men onto planks of cedar wood. The formline designs are divided into two groups: one representing animals and the other the human face. This is an example of the second group, showing a large face in the centre of the blanket. Three separate sections of the design are set out very precisely; the height at the centre is half the width and the black-and-yellow striped border is one-twelfth of the total width. The divisions of the fields are clearly marked and the side sections are symmetrical. There is, however, generally some variation in the curve of the lower border.

Items like this blanket are traded extensively and were highly prized for the Chief Dances at Potlaches, when the chiefs of the southern tribes would wear them. This type of blanket weaving was once carried out over a wide area, but disease decimated many people and the art died out with them. The Chilkat women alone carry on this tradition.

Source: ‘Folk Art’, Susann Linn-Williams, pp. 220-21.

[blatantescapism]

Yes, absolutely!

And I will write up all my overexcited thoughts on creating drafts and designs, at some future point when I have the time and sanity.

Of course, there’s plenty of books on this subject already, so you don’t need to listen to me. I just have a somewhat different approach than the books I’ve read, and am itching to share.

A lot of tapestries are actually just plain weave in structure. Your floor loom can be used for that kind of tapestry, but also more structurally complex things like figured brocade, shadow weave, summer and winter, rose path, etc etc.

A book you might find useful is “Weft-Faced Pattern Weaves: Tabby to Taqueté” by Nancy Arthur Hoskins.

(To sidetrack, the pinnacle of tapestry art is Chilkat weaving/twining. It can NOT be woven on a floor loom. It uses completely different, absolutely brilliant techniques. I highly recommend “The Chilkat Dancing Blanket” by Cheryl Samuel. More people ought to know and honor Jennie Thlunaut’s name.)

Sidetracking even more completely, “false ikat”, the type using deliberate color-pooling or patterned sock yarn, is a ton of fun, and can be used as a background for other techniques (like brocade):

Probably very obvious but if I were to follow this draft to make my kitchen towels:

And I used all black for my weft, which parts of this design would turn out black, the white or the peachy-orange?

[formlines]

Chilkat Blanket Necklace

David Neel

from the website: From my childhood I wanted to be a Kwakiutl artist. My first piece of Northwest coast Indigenous art was a painting, which I did when I was 8 years old, which based on a Chilkat blanket that I saw in a National Geographic magazine. Ever since that time I have wanted to do another art work based on the Chilkat style design. I came upon the idea to make a pendant with a Chilkat style design, using 23K gold (96.5% pure)  wire to symbolize the distinctive goats wool fringe. I then inlaid the eyes, not with abalone shell, but with 23K gold to compliment the gold “fringe”. The result is a one-of-a-kind necklace that pays homage to the Chilkat robes, which came to the Kwakwaka’wakw from the Tlingit people through marriage.

- David Neel

[dailyhistoryposts]

Chilkat blanket, collection of the University of Alaska Museum of the North

[maggiemay63]

A Qagyuhl woman wears a fringed Chilkat blanket and a mask representing a deceased relative who had been a shaman. 1914.

photo credit:  Edward Sheriff Curtis

[thebigkelu]

Chilkat woman weaving blanket, Alaska - Winter & Pond - 1910