YEIL KOOWÚ • QWĒGAL GIA’T • RAVEN’S TAIL WEAVING

One Within Another Robe

by Kathy Rado, 1991
Loan Courtesy Kathy Rado, LC.490

Named by Haida elder Vesta Johnson, after the predominant element of nested rectangles covering the design field, Kathy Rado wove the robe for her late husband Pedro Rado of the Dakl’aweidi Clan of Klukwan.

In the early 1990s, some of the first robes of the new tradition were copies of, or inspired by, the surviving robes of the old tradition. Two of these originals, collected in the 1790s and preserved in the Peter the Great Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, use narrow strips of sea otter fur as warps to create a fully fur-lined robe. Sea otter has the plushest fur on earth, with up to one million hairs per square inch. Kathy Rado reconstructed the laborious technique of weaving strips of the fur to produce a beautiful—and warm—robe.

Spanish sailor Jacinto Caamaño, who visited southeast Alaska in 1791, met with Natives “who came alongside the ship to barter sea otter skins, mats made of the inner bark of pine trees, cloaks woven from the same material and other trifles.” He reported that from this party, he “obtained a cloak, or mantle, made from the inner wool of the wild goat. This work is very fine in the thread, well spun, and well woven. Narrow strips of sea otter fur are working into this; and are so neatly sewn that the outer side of the garment has the appearance of whole skin, while nothing is noticeable on the inner side… The back part is decorated with various figures or patterns in purple color.”