Sara Jacobsen, 19, grew up eating family dinners beneath a stunning Native American robe.
Not
that she gave it much thought. Until, that is, her senior year of high
school, when she saw a picture of a strikingly similar robe in an art
history class.
The teacher told the class about how the robe was
used in spiritual ceremonies, Sara Jacobsen said. “I started to wonder
why we have it in our house when we’re not Native American.”
She said she asked her dad a few questions about this robe. Her dad, Bruce Jacobsen, called that an understatement.
“I
felt like I was on the wrong side of a protest rally, with terms like
‘cultural appropriation’ and ‘sacred ceremonial robes’ and ‘completely
inappropriate,’ and terms like that,” he said.
“I got defensive
at first, of course,” he said. “I was like, ‘C’mon, Sara! This is more
of the political stuff you all say these days.’”
But Sara didn’t
back down. “I feel like in our country there are so many things that
white people have taken that are not theirs, and I didn’t want to
continue that pattern in our family,” she said.
The robe had been
a centerpiece in the Jacobsen home. Bruce Jacobsen bought it from a
gallery in Pioneer Square in 1986, when he first moved to Seattle. He
had wanted to find a piece of Native art to express his appreciation of
the region.
The Chilkat robe that hung over the Jacobsen dining room table for years. Credit Courtesy of the Jacobsens
“I just thought it was so beautiful, and it was like nothing I had seen before,” Jacobsen said.
The
robe was a Chilkat robe, or blanket, as it’s also known. They are woven
by the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian peoples of Alaska and British
Columbia and are traditionally made from mountain goat wool. The tribal
or clan origin of this particular 6-foot-long piece was unclear, but it
dated back to around 1900 and was beautifully preserved down to its long
fringe.
“It’s a completely symmetric pattern of geometric
shapes, and also shapes that come from the culture,” like birds,
Jacobsen said. “And then it’s just perfectly made — you can see no seams
in it at all.”
Jacobsen hung the robe on his dining room wall.
After
more needling from Sara, Jacobsen decided to investigate her claims. He
emailed experts at the Burke Museum, which has a huge collection of
Native American art and artifacts.
“I got this eloquent email
back that said, ‘We’re not gonna tell you what to go do,’ but then they
confirmed what Sara said: It was an important ceremonial piece, that it
was usually owned by an entire clan, that it would be passed down
generation to generation, and that it had a ton of cultural significance
to them.“
Jacobsen
says he was a bit disappointed to learn that his daughter was right
about his beloved Chilkat robe. But he and his wife Gretchen now no
longer thought of the robe as theirs. Bruce Jacobsen asked the curators
at the Burke Museum for suggestions of institutions that would do the
Chilkat robe justice. They told him about the Sealaska Heritage
Institute in Juneau.
When Jacobsen emailed, SHI Executive
Director Rosita Worl couldn’t believe the offer. “I was stunned. I was
shocked. I was in awe. And I was so grateful to the Jacobsen family.”
Worl said the robe has a huge monetary value. But that’s not why it’s precious to local tribes.
“It’s
what we call ‘atoow’: a sacred clan object,” she said. “Our beliefs are
that it is imbued with the spirit of not only the craft itself, but
also of our ancestors. We use [Chilkat robes] in our ceremonies when we
are paying respect to our elders. And also it unites us as a people.”
Since
the Jacobsens returned the robe to the institute, Worl said, master
weavers have been examining it and marveling at the handiwork. Chilkat
robes can take a year to make – and hardly anyone still weaves them.
“Our
master artist, Delores Churchill, said it was absolutely a spectacular
robe. The circles were absolutely perfect. So it does have that
importance to us that it could also be used by our younger weavers to
study the art form itself.”
Worl said private collectors hardly ever return anything to her organization. The federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act requires
museums and other institutions that receive federal funding to
repatriate significant cultural relics to Native tribes. But no such law
exists for private collectors.
Bruce
and Gretchen Jacobsen hold the Chilkat robe they donated to the
Sealaska Heritage Institute as Joe Zuboff, Deisheetaan, sings and drums
and Brian Katzeek (behind robe) dances during the robe’s homecoming
ceremony Saturday, August 26, 2017. Credit NOBU KOCH / SEALASKA HERITAGE INSTITUTE
Worl
says the institute is lobbying Congress to improve the chances of
getting more artifacts repatriated. “We are working on a better tax
credit system that would benefit collectors so that they could be
compensated,” she said.
Worl hopes stories like this will encourage people to look differently at the Native art and artifacts they possess.
The Sealaska Heritage Institute welcomed home the Chilkat robe in a two-hour ceremony over the weekend. Bruce and Gretchen Jacobsen traveled to Juneau to celebrate the robe’s homecoming.
Really glad that this is treated as hard hitting news, no really, I am
So the other night during D&D, I had the sudden thoughts that:
1) Binary files are 1s and 0s
2) Knitting has knit stitches and purl stitches
You could represent binary data in knitting, as a pattern of knits and purls…
You can knit Doom.
However, after crunching some more numbers:
The compressed Doom installer binary is 2.93 MB. Assuming you are using sock weight yarn, with 7 stitches per inch, results in knitted doom being…
3322 square feet
Factoring it out…302 people, each knitting a relatively reasonable 11 square feet, could knit Doom.
Hi fun fact!!
The idea of a “binary code” was originally developed in the textile industry in pretty much this exact form. Remember punch cards? Probably not! They were a precursor to the floppy disc, and were used to store information in the same sort of binary code that we still use:
Here’s Mary Jackson (c.late 1950s) at a computer. If you look closely in the yellow box, you’ll see a stack of blank punch cards that she will use to store her calculations.
This is what a card might look like once punched. Note that the written numbers on the card are for human reference, and not understood by the computer.
But what does it have to do with textiles? Almost exactly what OP suggested. Now even though machine knitting is old as balls, I feel that there are few people outside of the industry or craft communities who have ever seen a knitting machine.
Here’s a flatbed knitting machine (as opposed to a round or tube machine), which honestly looks pretty damn similar to the ones that were first invented in the sixteenth century, and here’s a nice little diagram explaining how it works:
But what if you don’t just want a plain stocking stitch sweater? What if you want a multi-color design, or lace, or the like? You can quite easily add in another color and integrate it into your design, but for, say, a consistent intarsia (two-color repeating pattern), human error is too likely. Plus, it takes too long for a knitter in an industrial setting. This is where the binary comes in!
Here’s an intarsia swatch I made in my knitwear class last year. As you can see, the front of the swatch is the inverse of the back. When knitting this, I put a punch card in the reader,
and as you can see, the holes (or 0′s) told the machine not to knit the ground color (1′s) and the machine was set up in such a way that the second color would come through when the first color was told not to knit.
tl;dr the textiles industry is more important than people give it credit for, and I would suggest using a machine if you were going to try to knit almost 3 megabytes of information.
It goes beyond this. Every computer out there has memory. The kind of memory you might call RAM. The earliest kind of memory was magnetic core memory. It looked like this:
Wires going through magnets. This is how all of the important early digital computers stored information temporarily. Each magnetic core could store a single bit – a 0 or a 1. Here’s a picture of a variation of this, called rope core memory, from one NASA’s Apollo guidance computers:
You may think this looks incredibly handmade, and that’s because it is. But these are also extreme close-ups. Here’s the scale of the individual cores:
The only people who had the skills necessary to thread all of these cores precisely enough were textile and garment workers. Little old ladies would literally thread the wires by hand.
And thanks to them, we were able to land on the moon. This is also why memory in early computers was so expensive. It had to be hand-crafted, and took a lot of time.
Don’t underestimate the impact craft has had on our culture
VIKING LORE HELD THAT BOTH WEAVING AND SORCERY WERE WOMEN’S WORK, DITTO THE ORDERING OF THE HOUSE ACCOUNTS. MANY CULTURES HAVE HISTORICALLY LEFT ACCOUNTANCY TO WOMEN! MANY SOCIETIES HAVE ALSO LEFT FIBERCRAFT TO WOMEN BECAUSE IT IS TEDIOUS AND REPETITIVE BUT ALSO VERY NECESSARY. SEE ALSO: COOKING, CLEANING, BUDGETING, EMOTIONAL LABOR.
ANYWAY FIBERCRAFT, AS I HAVE DISCOVERED VIA LEARNING TO DO A WHOLE LOT OF IT, IS ALMOST ENTIRELY APPLIED MATHEMATICS EXCEPT FOR THE PART THAT’S ENGINEERING (WHICH IS ALSO MATHEMATICS). ONCE YOU LEARN EVEN THE BASICS OF KNITTING, SEWING, AND WEAVING, IT BECOMES ABSOLUTELY INCREDIBLE TO REALIZE MEN THINK WOMEN ARE BY VIRTUE OF THEIR SEX (these are of course sexist gender-essentialist men who are not cool with trans people) ILL-EQUIPPED TO DO MATH SOMEHOW. HOLY SHIT, HAVE YOU SEEN HEIRLOOM KNITTING PATTERNS? HAVE YOU SEEN THE FORETHOUGHT THAT GOES INTO WORKING A HARNESS LOOM? OH MY GOD.
THIS IS, THEN, WHERE PROGRAMMING (AND SORCERY) COMES IN. A PROGRAM IS “CODED INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE AUTOMATIC PERFORMANCE OF A PARTICULAR TASK”. WEAVING IS OFTEN A BINARY PATTERN: OVER/UNDER. PUNCH CARDS ON ADVANCED LOOMS CAN SET WHETHER THREADS GO OVER OR UNDER, AND SWITCHING THE CARDS AROUND YIELDS DIFFERENT PATTERNS OF CLOTH. A DUDE NAMED JAQUARD DEVELOPED EXTREMELY COMPLEX PUNCH CARDS THAT STARTED TO ENCODE HIGH VOLUMES OF INFORMATION FOR INCREASINGLY AUTOMATED LOOMS. A HUNDRED YEARS LATER WOMEN ARE USED AGAIN FOR THE ‘TEDIOUS BUT NECESSARY’ BUSINESS OF USING BINARY ON/OFF CARDS TO WRITE PROGRAMS FOR EARLY COMPUTERS.
WHERE SORCERY FITS INTO ALL THIS IS HAVE YOU EVER SEEN A WOMAN USE A CARD LOOM REALLY FAST? IT’S THE MOST INTIMIDATING SKILLSET OUTSIDE OF A RODEO. SHE 100% LOOKS LIKE SHE COULD MAKE YOUR BUTT FALL OFF IF YOU CROSSED HER. APPLIED MATHEMATICS / ENGINEERING IS BAFFLING TO WATCH FROM THE OUTSIDE, ESPECIALLY WHEN IT COMES TO FIBERCRAFT. YOU CAN MANIFEST WITH YOUR MIND AND HANDS THIS HIGHER AND TRUER ARCANE PLANE OF EXISTENCE INTO A NICE SCARF AND KEEP YOUR HUSBAND ALIVE FOR THE WINTER. MAYBE IF HE CROSSES YOU YOU CAN ALSO MAKE HIS BUTT FALL OFF.
I TOTALLY ACKNOWLEDGE THAT MEN DO FIBERCRAFT TOO BUT THIS WAS SPECIFICALLY ABOUT THE INTERSECTIONS BETWEEN WOMEN, MATH, FIBERCRAFT, AND MAGIC, SO THERE YOU GO.
You may have known this already, but the Apollo guidance computer’s core memory was literally woven strands of copper, and it was all done by hand, by a bunch of women. Because who else knows how to weave things?
*SLAMS HANDS ON TABLE* WOMEN’S WORK SENT MEN TO THE FUCKING MOON HOW IS THAT NOT MAGIC AS HELL
Oh oh oh oh this is my subject on Viking reenactment gigs, I’m the group’s Vala and I also fill in for the weavers and spinners because IT’S THE SAME SHIT let me tell you about it 😀 😀 😀
SPINNING with a drop spindle, none of your fancy high-tech spinning wheels here my friend, SPINNING OMG is literally taking undifferentiated fluff and turning it into the most useful and life-essential item in your whole civilisation with little more than a click of your fingers–without thread you have no sails, no clothes, no blankets, it’s literally power of life-or-death shit here, it is magic AS FUCK. That’s without doubt why the Norns were spinners and weavers.
There was laws about not saying people’s names or talking about people when you’re spinning, because you’re basically bringing something into being out of nothing, and with that kind of power you could just as easily bring events into being. So folks probably look the other way when you’re spinning thread for your son’s shirt and you want him to be victorious and honourable, but if you’re spinning away and bitching out about that ho Ingvar (see below) and how she stole your man and deserves the same to happen to her, that’s a crime. You’d be in better legal standing if you just punched her, because enchantment against a person was seen as sneaky and underhanded, with all connotations of forethought and antisocial intention, while punching someone could be an understandable lapse of self-control.
It was also forbidden to spin “against the sun” (ie: counterclockwise) because ok we also know there’s a mechanical aspect to that as well, it’s very useful to have the twist going in the same direction at all times so it doesn’t cancel itself out, but it was believed that an item made from backwards-spun thread could literally kill a person, there’s an account of a Vala spinning a shirt to murder a priest and it’s inferred that it was spun backwards. Because like, the sun is the source of all life, and to go against the sun goes against life, and much as the anti-twist cancels out the twist, it cancels out life. Brutal.
And you couldn’t talk about people when weaving, either, because weaving is an extension of the whole something-from-nothing power, but presumably people did anyway because there’s an actual find of a weaving tablet with a curse carved on it “Sigvor’s Ingvar shall have
my misfortune” so basically every time the card was turned, it would strengthen the curse, and literally spin and weave it into being. HOW FUCKING AWESOME IS THAT. There’s also a find of a weaving sword with a “love poem” carved on it, note the quotemarks because this “poem” goes “Think of me, I think of you; Love me, I love you” THAT AIN’T NO POEM FAM THAT A SPELL. She probably making him (or her) a shirt.
And that’s three times I’ve mentioned shirts, so I should tell you that making a shirt for someone was a Big Deal, in a way it was sort of the period equivalent of the boyfriend sweater, with the sheer amount of labour that goes into making a shirt you have to really give a whole lot of shits about that person. There’s an account of a woman making a shirt for her brother-in-law while her husband was away, and it’s OMG DRAMA BOMB. The Vala I mentioned above really gave a lot of shits about murdering that priest. Hence, the most-likely-a-woman who owned the inscribed weaving sword could very well have been making a shirt for her crush, who may OR MAY NOT have been her husband. You know, she could’ve been like “hope my nice hubby thinks about me while he’s away” or she could’ve been like “damn, brother-in-law too hot” or she could’ve been like “damn, Ingvar too hot” (wlw aren’t attested at all but you gotta assume it happened because humans) but in any event she knew what was up. And making a shirt for someone wasn’t thought of as *overtly* magical, mostly, but there’s kind of a subtext to it that presupposes any shirt could be enchanted and probably was to some extent.
And this is just scratching the surface of the academically well established stuff, with none of my own hypotheses and observations. I can go on for hours.
I have talked about knitting and fiber arts with many different women of all sorts of religion and non religion, and the vast majority of them say that when they make special items, they put some kind of intentions into the garment.
Please join us in welcoming the newest member of the Department of Top-Notch Textile Art: Northwest Arkansas-based fiber artist Dani Ives, who creates awesomely realistic needle-felted animals as well as plants and even desserts.
Ives describes her method as “painting with wool,” in which she applies her love of animals and her background in biology to build intricately layered portraits of a variety of flora and fauna.
Many of the animals Ives creates are commissioned custom pet portraits, which are available here. She also sells original pieces and prints of her work via her GoodNaturedArt Etsy shop.
“My grandmother wove in me a tapestry that was impossible to unwind,” Vigo said. “Since then, I’ve dedicated my life to the sea, just as those who have come before me.”
Like the 23 women before her, Vigo has never made a penny from her work. She is bound by a sacred ‘Sea Oath’ that maintains that byssus should never be bought or sold.
Instead, Vigo explained that the only way to receive byssus is as a gift. […]
“Byssus doesn’t belong to me, but to everyone,” Vigo asserted. “Selling it would be like trying to profit from the sun or the tides.”
More recently, a Japanese businessman approached Vigo with an offer to purchase her most famous piece, ‘The Lion of Women’, for €2.5 million. It took Vigo four years to stitch the glimmering 45x45cm design with her fingernails, and she dedicated it to women everywhere.
“I told him, ‘Absolutely not’,” she declared. “The women of the world are not for sale.”
The government is trying to evict her after shutting down her free museum to showcase her work because she refuses their demands she tell her secret.
She needs to raise €85,000 by November 2018 or the town will evict her. She’s only raised €6,472. The page says that there is no goal bc anything they raise is a success but the article says she needs the €85,000 in order to own her home and not be evicted. Chiara Vigo is an amazingly talented Jewish women who deserves to stay in her town close to the ocean !!
Steel Phoenix Studios 