Chilkat Apron

Chilkat textiles were originally made by northern Tlingit people, and traded down the coast to be worn on ceremonial occasions by Haida, Tsimshian and Kwakwaka'wakw chiefs. Chilkat robes were symbols of wealth. To own them endowed a chief with great prestige. Even greater prestige resulted from giving them away in potlatch. If there was no chief attending of high enough rank to receive it, the blanket might be cut into strips (like coppers) and distributed to a number of persons of prestige. These strips would be made into other ceremonial garments, such as shirts, aprons, leggings, headdresses, or bags. Aprons were also woven on looms, and may have been one of the earliest products of these looms. However, greater prestige rested in ownership of a dancing blanket. A chief would be dressed in his ceremonial regalia when he died and was laid in state.

The dance apron was given to Dorothy Fladmark's aunt, probably while she was nursing at a hospital in Sitka, Alaska during the 1920s. When Mrs. Fladmark was a child, it hung on the wall of her grandmother's house.

ceremonial

Emblems or crests distinguish different social groups (lineages, phratries, or moieties) and symbolize their privileges. They can be shown on any material possessions, such as totem poles, robes or aprons, and each group owns the right to display specific crests. Within each group, families or individuals have the right to show the general crests is specific ways.

The design was traditionally first painted onto a pattern board by a man, then precisely copied in weaving by a woman. The style operated within strict conventions, but at the same time permitting subtle individual variations and originality. The weaving technique evolved from the craft of finger twining yellow cedar bark blankets. Bark continued to form the core of the warp strands in the blankets which were handspun with mountain-goat wool. The handspun woolen weft may be left white, or dyed with hemlock bark for black, wolf moss for yellow, adding blue from copper or trade blankets to achieve a blue-green for different areas of the design. The loom is a single beam loom which consists of two upright posts, and a broad crossbeam from which the warp hangs freely. The warp ends are divided into sections and inserted into gut bags to keep the warps clean and untangled during twining. Weaving proceeds from top to bottom of the blanket, and extra warps are added when the design field is completed, in order to produce the curved border at the bottom.

Twined chilkat dance apron with a curved bottom edge and fringe, which is made of mixed wool and cedar bark. The main crest design is an abstract and animal design twined in handspun wool over a cedar bark warp in off-white, yellow, blue-green and black.