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Sometimes called "top-down" or "half-hitch" coiling, this technique is where my interests in looping, coiling and history merge. The stitching is like looping with an added core element. The shaping is like coiling. The results are contemporary -- an interpretation, not a replication, of a technique that honors a very old tradition.
Tierra del Fuego is an archipelago at the southernmost tip of South America. When Magellan sailed through the channel that joins the Atlantic and Pacific, he called the area the land of fire. The Yámana people who inhabited those coastal areas used scarce material resources creatively to survive there.
A hunting and gathering subsistence economy requires 7 to 500 square miles of land per capita. People live in small groups, and move on before they exhaust local resources. Until about 8,000 years ago, all people were foragers. Some specialized in hunting game, fishing, and shellfish gathering, while others were almost completely gatherers of wild plants. Today, most remaining hunter-gatherer societies are confined to desert, mountain, jungle, or Arctic wastelands.
People in those places are generally considered poor in material culture. They're selective about what they possess, but what they possess has real value to them. They make do with what they have, finding creative ways to use the resources available to them to meet their needs. That's their necessity, and also their tradition.
I think it's a good tradition to remember. I may be working Fuegian coiling with a core of willow I grew myself or with strips of luxurious fabrics -- getting very different results from the same technique because of my choice of materials. I'm grateful to have choices, but I try not to forget that the best resource I have is my imagination.
Learn More About Coiling
Coiling & Fuegian Coiling Workshop Topics
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