NAAXEIN • NAAXIIN • GWISHALAAYT • CHILKAT WEAVING

Pattern Board

A pattern board similar to this one was used by the weaver of the “Coppers Robe.” This board has been passed down in a family of weavers in Klukwan, where it has been used to weave robes of this pattern in the past. The owner, Lani Hotch, inherited the pattern board from her grandmother, Jennie Warren, who was a Chilkat weaver. Jennie Warren’s mother, Mary Willard, and her grandmother, Saantaas’, were also weavers as well.

Tin.aa Naaxein Coppers Robe

Attributed to the Tlingit, early 19th century
Loan Courtesy Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.

Probably collected in 1825 by Captain Robert Bennet Forbes, this robe is one of the finest and oldest known to exist today. It shows that Chilkat weaving was fully developed as early as 1825. The robe was probably collected in southeast Alaska and taken south to Fort Ross, the Russian-American Company’s trading post in northern California, where the American trader Captain Forbes acquired it. The design of the oldest robes such as this one lack distinct side panels common to robes from the later 19th and 20th centuries.

The crest or meaning represented by this unique masterpiece has not been preserved in the record. The interpretation of the design is difficult once a robe has been removed from the culture. Based on clues offered by the formline structure, it may represent a diving whale flanked by creatures with tall dorsal fins— orcas, perhaps, who hunt the larger baleen whales in packs. Between the central and side designs, a pair of “tin.aa”--copper shields symbolizing wealth—lay between the predators and prey.