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

Leggings

by Edna Davis Jackson (Tlingit), 1986
ASM 11-B-1877

In the mid-1980s, Davis was one of Cheryl Samuel’s first raven’s tail weaving students in Alaska, after Samuel began teaching here through the University of Alaska Southeast. The students undertook smaller projects such as leggings and pouches to learn the technique, and later many of the pieces became ceremonial regalia. The primary motif of nested rectangles, called woosh kináadei ádi (one within another), comes from basketry.

Lightning Purse

by Kay Field Parker, 2009
Gift of the Rasmuson Foundation Art Acquisition Initiative. ASM 2009-29-1

A contemporary drawstring purse woven in the raven’s tail tradition, with the main motif being the intricate zig-zag pattern known to weavers today as the lightning motif.