The Raven's Tail

"The rich wrap themselves up sometimes in white blankets, manufactured in the country, from the wool of the wild sheep, which is as soft and fine as the Spanish merino. These blankets are embroidered with square fringes, and figures with black and yellow tassels. Some of them are so curiously worked on one side with the fur of the sea otter, that they appear as if lined by it, and are very handsome." - Iurii Fedorovich Lisianskii, Sitka Sound, 1805. When Europeans first visited the north-western coast of North America, the weavers of the area were making robes of exquisite beauty to adorn the wealthiest of their noble class. Patterned in bold black and white designs streaked with scintillating dashes of yellow, these robes predate the better known Chilkat Blankets from the same area. Today only 11 robes exist, three of them as fragments. Another two are shown on Russian historical paintings by Mikhail Tikhanov. The only other known robes are found on an archival photograph and on two sketches by Pavel Milhailof. To produce this book, Cheryl Samuel travelled to Leningrad, Copenhagen, and London to examine the six robes in Europe.
She also studied the robes housed in museums in Canada and the United States. Using this research material she was able to reconstruct Chief Kotlean's robe. In the process, she reconstructed an old weaving style no longer in use by the native people on the northern coast. In this work, Samuel presents the known historical data on the robes along with an analysis of the materials used and a description of the nine twining techniques.