Page 14 - J.D. Lenzen "Decorative Fusion Knots"

introduction

For tens of thousands of years, knots played a prosperity. But others were created for more
critical role in human society. They have helped utilitarian purposes such as buttons for jackets
us catch food, sail the seas, build empires, wor- and shirts.
ship, remember and heal. Quietly supporting us
through all our historic conquests and adven- Much like the development of any art form, time
tures, knots helped our ancestors tie their world and practice are the keys to new ideas and inno-
together. vative developments. Mariners throughout his-
tory, with lots of time of their hands, began
The Incas of South America, for instance, may coxcombing, covering rails and wheels with dec-
have used knots tied along strings as an early orative wraps and ties. These wraps and ties
form of writing— communicating narratives of served the dual purpose of improving the grip
the Incan Empire through knots rather than ink on an otherwise slippery object, while at the
and paper. They also used knots as accounting same time increasing the beauty of the ship.
tools, generating and keeping records similar to
those kept by modern day bookkeepers and As still more time passed, knots grew to become
census takers. a semi-finite field of study. Knot books started
presenting what had come before; with the
More popularly, the Celts used stylized represen- most attention being paid to practical knots.
tations of knots to express a variety of natural Then, in 1944, Clifford W. Ashley published The
and spiritual concepts. Seen on ancient struc- Ashley Book of Knots (ABOK), an encyclopedic ref-
tures and in modern motifs, these decorative erence manual describing how to tie thousands
knots conveyed the relationships between man of decorative and functional knots from all
and woman, hunter and prey, earth, spirit and around the world. To this day, Ashley’s tome re-
the universe. Still other Celtic knots are believed mains the quintessential book of knots.
to have represented protection from evil spirits,
and were placed on battle shields or near people Members of the International Guild of Knot Tyers
who were sick. (IGKT; officially founded in 1982) updated ABOK
in 1979, adding what was then believed to be a
Asian cultures, primarily Chinese, produced new knot called the Hunter’s Bend. Many of the
decorative knots that took on the esthetic qual- guild members have gone on to write multiple
ities of religious symbols, nature and money. books on the subject of knots. Most of these
The Double Coin Knot, for instance, is so named books, with the exception of a select few, focus
because it looks like two Chinese coins overlap- on what has come before as opposed to new or
ping. The majority of these decorative knots recently created knots. When it comes to deco-
were meant to represent good luck, virtue, or rative knots, this last statement is especially true.

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