June Projects: Charles W. Morgan, Eleggua, Peyote Rattle and More!!!

Although I have been working at the museums quite regularly of late, I am still finding time to work on some little projects here and there. Lest my patient readers begin to fear I've dropped off the face of the earth, I'll take a moment to share...

1. An old model of the whaler Charles W. Morgan that I had been meaning to assemble for at least the last year. I finally started on it, and am about 3/4 of the way through. I'll confess that I never had the patience for model building growing up, and still find the process supremely tedious. I made one other model of the US Navy hospital ship Haven a few years ago to display in my hospitalmuseum; I think the Charles Morgan may be my final foray into model building! This model won't be painted... I have another idea in mind that I will share as the project nears completion! Before getting started on the model, I drove down to Mystic Seaport, where the actual Charles Morgan is hauled out of the water for a major restoration, to get some inspiration:













The brick "tryworks" on deck, where blubber was boiled and rendered into oil.

The area below deck at the front of the ship called the "forecastle" where the majority of the crew members slept. Most of the props and bedding in the forecastle and throughout the rest of the ship have been stripped out for the duration of the restoration.

2. I have had a handful of bone choker tube beads laying around for a while; I combined them with some India glass trade beads and made a nice, simple Plains Indian-style choker. This may end up in the FinderMaker online shop when I start stocking it up, as I'm not generally one to leave the house done up in Native American-style regalia (if you were to infer that I am apt to parade around inside the house in Native American regalia, though, you might just be on to something!)

3. This is a replica of a wonderful coconut and cowrie shell Eleggua effigy I saw online . It was for sale, but was way out of my price range, and anyway it looked like a fun project to replicate at home! I'm not done with it yet; just need to find some colorful little feathers and a few other magical sundries to adorn it with!

4. I made one of these peyote ceremony rattles about a year ago, and, after running across an extra gourd I had purchased at a farmer's market last year, decided it was time to assemble another. I think this one has turned out beautifully so far; the feather and horsehair tip on this one is extra fancy! The next step will be to add the peyote-stitch beadwork over the white leather portions; I think the beadwork on this one will have several shades of green in it. I can't wait to share photos when it is done!

5. You are probably getting awfully tired of seeing this thing! I took the strip of lazy-stitch beadwork off of the front once again and re-did it in the pattern you see presently. I also replaced the earlier cobalt beads on the red sheepskin portion with old turquoise-colored glass trade beads, and affixed the abalone and tin-cone hair drops around the sides and back (I will do a complete post with photos of all of this when it is completed!) I chose some of the finest wild turkey feathers from the batch I found at Mount Hope Farm, and have wrapped and stitched red sheepskin around the base of each in preparation for affixing them to the top of the cap. I'm finally happy with the way that front beadwork strip looks, and will definitely be keeping it!

6. In fact, I liked the beadwork pattern I came up with for the cap above so much that I just kept going with it on my little bead loom... I guess I have a hatband now!

7. One of my earliest FinderMaker posts showed me crafting a replica of an old whaling harpoon. I had made examples of two of the predominant styles of hand-darted harpoons: the double-flue and toggle irons, and figured I should add the third common style, the single-flue iron, to complete the set. The baked fimo head has been epoxied onto the shaft, and the seam sanded smooth; now the shaft and head will be painted to resemble old metal, then affixed to the cedar pole that is all shaped, sanded and ready to receive it. This is a fun project to work on using readily available materials; if your collection of nautical artifacts could benefit from the addition of a real showpiece, I encourage you to go back and follow my how-to!

Thank you so much for sticking around... I regret that I've allowed so much time to lapse since my last post! I'll be sure to do updates as I complete these (and other!) projects. Thanks for joining me!!!

Ceremonial Bachelorette Party Headdress!!!

While I wasn't permitted to attend this talented friend's festive bachelorette party (girls only!), I jumped at the chance to craft the crown that would be placed on her head during her "abduction" and subsequent rituals and ceremonies performed throughout the evening to honor the bride-to-be!

I tend to be bad about documenting projects from start to finish; many of the details of making things seem so mundane to me that I can't bring myself to stop what I'm doing to photograph them, and before I know it I have a completed craft project and no photos of the creative process (which is pretty much what happened with this one)! I realize this is a problem, and I'm really going to work on this in the future!

For this project I decided pretty quickly that the crown was really going to be more of a headdress, and from there, I began to visualize the various elements that make up a headdress and how I could personalize those elements for the bride-to-be. In keeping with the original request for a crown, I started by cutting a foundation strap of silver leather to resemble a crown that terminated on either end in long, thin strips that would be used to tie the headdress on:



Once I had that foundation figured out, I decided on a dark turquoise leather strip (aqua/turquoise was a dominant color in the wedding) that would serve as the backdrop for a strip of beadwork I was envisioning that would feature the bride and groom's initials. I cut the scalloped upper edge of the strip (with some difficulty) using pinking shears. Although I've been doing quite a bit of lazy stitch beadwork lately, the turquoise leather wasn't well suited for that technique (the surface of the leather is very dense, not "pillowy" and easily pierced like the deerskin I had been beading directly onto previously), so I set up my little bead loom, and proceeded to bead a decorative strip (while listening to the entire new Joanna Newsom album for free on NPR!). This is the pattern I came up with beforehand that I worked from while I was beading:



Once finished, I tied off the ends of the beadwork strip, and whipstitched through the outermost warp thread on the top and bottom edge of the bead strip and into the turquoise leather. Now that the beadwork was attached to the turquoise strip, I wanted to attach that to the silver crown foundation; this I accomplished by punching pairs of evenly spaced holes through both layers of leather with an awl, then poking strips of imitation sinew up through through the holes from the back of the headdress. Each strip of sinew passes through both layers of leather and a vintage mirrored turquoise glass bead on the front of the headdress, then back down through the second hole where it is secured by a knot in back, so while the row of 15 glass beads across the lower edge of the headdress appears decorative (it is pretty!) it is also structural, serving to hold everything together! I wanted to resort to using glue as little as possible; on this particular project, I felt like the process of stitching different materials together was representative of the union of my two friends, so I stitched alot, and wished for their happiness with each stitch!



I had a grand time plundering my craft bins for materials to use on this project! On either side of the beadwork strip hang two tin-cone and horsehair (a reference to Horsefingers, the bride-to-be's brilliant short film trilogy) drops that pass through a decorative abalone disk... again, these items are all affixed with the imitation sinew... no glue (yet!). The turquoise bells were then stitched on.



Now it was time to affix the feathers, and that is where the glue came into play. First I glued the little arrangement of colored feathers onto the inner surface of the silver leather crown with flexible craft glue and let that dry. Then I glued the long strip of white feathers (they are sold on a ribbon strip by the yard at M&J Trimming in Manhattan) onto the interior surface of the silver leather crown and let that dry. Finally, I glued a strip of wide cotton twill tape over the entire interior portion of the headdress to cover up any knots or feather bits that might poke out and feel uncomfortable against the head.



This was a really fun and meaningful project for me that culminated in the attendance of a super-duper fun and meaningful wedding! Thank You, Congratulations, and Best Wishes to you Both, Kirsten and Bill!!!

And Thank You for joining me, Kind Reader!!! I hope you will join me again soon-ish for the fun and scary next installment in my "The Natural History Museum Inspired This!" series!

Following are a few images of headdresses in the collection of The National Museum of the American Indian that served as inspiration:

Medicine Bag Makeover

The ceaseless drizzle and pall of grey clouds that has descended upon New England and refuses to lift has taken its toll on my spirits of late, kind reader. Though I have been mostly house bound, and thus surrounded by craft materials and dozens of worthy projects, somehow all of these things fail to inspire, mired as we have been in all of this damp gloom. What to do, then? Well, I have been enjoying perusing the online collections of the National Museum of the American Indian and Harvard's Peabody Museum of Anthropology, and was inspired to dust off my beading supplies and small sack of loose dentalium shells and engage in a bit of Native American style craft work.

Following is an image of a small buckskin medicine bag that has been in my possession for some twenty years and has acquired quite an aged patina.



Many years ago I adorned it with a cowrie shell, and a strip of beadwork that I had done on a loom and (gasp!) glued onto the front of the bag. It didn't take long for the beadwork to fall off, leaving ugly patches of glue behind. This morning I decided it was high time to try out a beading technique I hadn't tried before: the so-called "lazy stitch", so as to cover the scars left over from the earlier adornment, and add a touch authentic Native American flair. The lazy stitch is a classic method for applying beads to leather; beads are stitched right onto the surface in tidy rows that may comprise a simple decorative strip or encompass a decorative expanse of beadwork on a vest, saddle bag, pair of leggings or the like. In learning the stitch, which is not difficult but does require some patience and an adherence to time tested techniques, I referred to Steve Nimerfro's guide entitled "Sioux Style Lazy Stitch Beadwork" published online by craft retailer Matoska Trading Company. I started by drawing a grid to represent the bead strip and then decided on a pattern, filling in the squares on the grid according to the bead colors I had chosen to use. Then I just translated the pattern I made up on the grid into actual beads, row by row, and stitched them on according to the instructions! I like the way it turned out-- not too bad for my first try!



I have a few more items I am eager to do lazy stitch on, most notably a buckskin shaman's cap I made about fifteen years ago that will benefit from strips of beadwork to cover the seams where the leather is sewn together. I will definitely post photos when I begin that project! I have a few other medicine bags that could use a little sprucing up... perhaps I should start a new FinderMaker segment called "Pimp My Medicine Bag" and invite readers to send in before and after photos of their medicine bag creations and alterations!

My second project, completed just last night, was inspired by this old necklace in the Peabody Museum's collection made by a member of the Karuk tribe in California:



Dentalium shells come from a type of Mollusk, and were used as an early form of currency by many Native American tribes. They were commonly strung on natural fiber thread and traded by the strand for goods or services. Strands were also bundled together and worn both as decoration and an outward symbol of wealth. I had a bag of small dentalium shells I had ordered online without any particular project in mind, and was delighted to finally be inspired to put them to use!



The shells are naturally hollow, but the pointed end is quite narrow, and needs to be nipped off so that a waxed thread may be passed through; they also tended to have bits of gravel lodged within, so it was necessary to run each one through with a stiff wire to clear the gravel before stringing. I was able to get seven strands from my one ounce bag ($3.50) which I then attached to a seven inch strip of rolled buckskin that would rest against the back of the neck (as the little pointy shells would be fairly uncomfortable against bare skin). This is how it turned out:





I really am quite thankful to all of the fellow FinderMakers who follow my blog. Knowing that there are folks out there who share my interest in finding and making things encourages me to stay active. Thanks so much for joining me here... I have so many projects to work on, and I look forward to sharing them with all of you!!!

Beaded Peyote Rattle..... Done!

I finally finished up the beadwork on the gourd rattle! It turned out fairly well, although Im not wild about the middle portion of beadwork (with the little white feathers going around) as the bead count going around was slightly off and that caused the pattern to not repeat evenly, but naturally I am inclined to notice every little flaw! I would also like to have worked more green beads into the design... perhaps I will revise it at some point. For the time being anyhow it will live quite happily next to the beaded Peyote prayer fan in its protective plexiglas case. Below is an installation view, and an unrelated view below that... a portion of my "sea curios" grouping that I just love looking at!





More posts to follow soon-ish! Thank You for visiting!

Deer Skull Embellished in the Style of the Huichol Indians of Mexico.

While living in Los Angeles, I initiated a ramble through the scrubby hills of Laguna Beach in search of treasure. I found it in the form of the remains of a deer which had clearly slipped on a gravelly slope leading into a densely vegetated ravine. Entangled in the scrub and injured by the fall, the deer's fate was sealed, the bones scattered in the vicinity evidence that coyotes had ensured that the creatures death was not in vain. Alas, the effects of time and searing sun left my treasure clean and brightly bleached, and I hiked back to the car in possession of a fine dear skull with attached antlers!

Upon arrival back at the shop, I sat down and contemplated how I might best display the skull. I arrived upon the idea of cutting the "skull cap" with the attached antlers away from the rest of the skull, and mounting that skull cap on a plaque of some sort in the fashion of what is known as a "European Style Trophy Mount" in taxidermy circles. The cutting was performed on a bandsaw, great care having been taken to protect the eyes and lungs from the great cloud of truly awful smelling bone dust that was generated in the process. The operation was successful, and I managed to retain all of the fingers with which I was originally provided!

While finishing up the antlers, I received as a gift a curious craft which is commonly referred to as a "Huichol Yarn Painting", so named both for the tribal peoples who make the things, and the material from which they are fashioned.



I'll refrain from boring the reader with too much information on the Huichols, as there are entire websites devoted to them accessible via a quick Google search. Suffice it to say, then, that these remarkable people utilize such common materials as yarn and beads to fashion otherworldly artifacts which are truly otherworldly in the sense that much of the imagery and symbolism apparent derives from visions encountered during the ceremonial use of the hallucinogenic Peyote cactus (Lophophora Williamsii).

A quiet sort of revelation ensued when I happened upon images of ceremonial gourd bowls that the Huichols had embellished with colored glass seed beads in complex and colorful geometric patterns. The deer being of great importance in the scheme of Huichol religion, it became apparent that I should try my hand at Huichol style beadwork on the deer skull I had just prepared for display!

Some easy sleuthing revealed that the craft is affected by pushing the colored beads into a sticky coating which is applied to the substrate (wooden mask, gourd bowl, deer skull). The most commonly used "sticky substance" is a mixture of melted copal resin and beeswax blended together and applied while liquid. Upon cooling, the mixture firms up but maintains a tenacious tackiness which holds the beads firm to the substrate indefinitely. The same process is used in the yarn paintings, except colored strands of yarn are pressed into the wax blend instead of beads.




I had, from previous craft projects, a nice assortment of colored seed beads in the size "12" which is just a little smaller than the usual craft-store bought bead. There are many fine retailers of Native American crafts supplies that sell vast arrays of sizes and colors of seed beads (although I recommend avoiding Crazy Crow Trading Company as their stock is unpredictable and customer service is poor) and if you live near a Michael's or Crafts, Etc. you might peruse their selection of seed beads. It is worth noting that the Huichols make excellent use of the most vivid colors imaginable; It is mind boggling to imagine the stores of beads and yarns these folks must have on hand when one really looks closely at the stunning array of colors utilized in the average yarn painting or bead bowl. Pure beeswax is also available from your local craft supply merchant.

Now, as far as the copal is concerned, the substance is a resin which is exuded from a tree (Bursera fagaroides) in much the same way that a pine tree exudes sticky "pitch". Copal is commonly sold in Mexico and South America as an aromatic incense; it releases a heavenly aroma reminiscent of oranges when burned, and finds much use in religious ceremonies. I had some on hand which I had purchased in Tulum, Mexico, but for the purposes of the sticky base, one might very plausibly substitute pitch or sap collected from any of a number of species of conifers. If you are inclined to do things as the Huichols do, however, copal may be acquired rather inexpensively from Mazatec Garden. To make the sticky base, I simply heated equal parts broken up copal resin and beeswax in a can on a double boiler until the copal had melted completely and was thoroughly blended with the beeswax. The resulting liquid was then brushed over the whole skull such that the resulting sticky base measured about 1/8" in thickness.

Next it was time to think about an overall pattern that might look pleasing on the skull. I consulted countless photographs before arriving at the design I finally executed. The design is not a direct copy of any one Huichol piece, but rather a collection of ideas and symbolic imagery rendered in the colors available to me, and scaled to suit the shape of the skull. The application of beads began in the middle of the skull and was worked out towards the edges. An awl was used to pick up each bead individually and push it lightly into the sticky wax mixture.



The imagery used in this case was not complex; The dominant green form represents the peyote cactus, between the antlers is a representation of a deer head with antlers. Smaller peyotes are also represented, as are various colorful radiating auras of "life energy". The whole application process took maybe three days, working 5 or so hours a day.

Finally, I prepared the skull for mounting by embedding a bolt in plaster poured into the cranial cavity (back part) of the skull:



I created a plaque for the skull out of a curious type of plastic known to fans of the contemporary artist Matthew Barney as "Self-Lubricating Plastic", some scraps of which I had salvaged from the trash during the installation of his retrospective at The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art I think it makes a fine, contemporary looking background for the beaded skull, which is attached by drilling a hole in the plaque and threading the bolt through, then securing that with a nut.



The resulting artifact looks, to my eye, every bit as authentic as a true Huichol made piece, and makes a fine accompaniment to my authentic Huichol yarn painting. It is worth mentioning that, as is sadly the case with many indigenous people of the Americas, the Huichols are, monetarily, quite poor. I support purchasing true, Huichol made crafts when possible, as such support helps to ensure the survival of the people and their culture. I hope that this post will propagate a better understanding of and respect for Native craft techniques and inspire anyone who is so inclined, to roll up their shirtsleeves and try their own hand at Huichol style beadwork!