Visitors to the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center in Klukwan can now see two Chilkat blankets. The blankets, added last month, are child-sized and exemplary of the close relationship between elders and children, said Lani Hotch, the center’s executive director. “We love to dress our children up. It’s a special thing. The toddler regalia competition at Celebration comes from that long tradition of adorning our young ones.”
Celebration is the biennial festival of Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures, held in Juneau.
The blankets are displayed together to emphasize family lineage. One blanket, adorned with a baby eagle and foliage, was woven by Mary Willard in the early 1940s for her great-grandson Ralph Strong.
The other was made by Willard’s daughter Jennie Warren in the early 1960s for Mayreld Parker, a Presbyterian missionary in Klukwan in the 1950s. It has a killer whale, geometric patterns and the face of the ever-present spirit.
Chilkat blankets are renowned for their intricacy and detail. It takes about nine months to a year to weave a child’s blanket, and a year or several to weave an adult-size blanket, Hotch said. One inch of blanket has typically 20 rows of weaving, which can take hours to accomplish.
Hotch is a master weaver herself, and made several of the other weavings on display at the center. She first learned to weave from her grandmother, Jennie Warren, the artist behind the killer whale blanket.
She said the art of what’s now known as Chilkat weaving was originally started by the Tsimshian people. “The first Klukwan weaver learned the art by taking apart Tsimshian blankets and seeing how they were made.”
The blankets are made using Ravenstail weaving, which refers to the method and the geometric patterns in weaving. In the 1700s there were only a few geometrically patterned blankets left, Hotch said, but now geometric patterns “are all the rage” again.
In her own work, Hotch uses geometric patterns as well as figures and animals.
“I use everything in my arsenal to make happen what I want to make happen.” She also uses vibrantly colored yarn, more than the traditional black, white, yellow and gray. “I kind of push the envelope, but my take is that if our ancestors had access to all this stuff, they would use it too.”
Hotch is working with two apprentices to pass down the art. She had worked on collaborative weaving pieces to teach others, but said after those projects “people still weren’t weaving full-sized robes on their own.”
She said she was inspired to take on apprentices after two prominent Chilkat weavers, Terri Rofkar and Clarissa Rizal, died in 2016 within a month of each other, both at the age of 60.
“That was kind of my wake-up,” said Hotch, who’s also in her 60s. “I don’t want to see this legacy of weaving die.”
Hotch received grants from the Vancouver, Washington-based Native Arts and Cultures Foundation and the National Parks Service to fund her work with apprentices. Grant funding has been instrumental to the Heritage Center, she said.
Hotch is inspired by seeing the work of other artists, and is excited to have the blankets added to the center’s collection. “Weaving gives me renewed hope.”
The killer whale blanket was previously on display at the Sheldon Museum. The baby eagle blanket is on loan from the Strong family and the whale blanket from the Strong and Warren families.
The heritage center is open for visitors 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday to Friday and 1 to 4 p.m. Saturdays.