Totem Outpost showcases A DYNAMIC GALLERY OF ART, made-by-hand crafts, lore, natural curios and artifacts from the interesting pathways of North America.
Featured: A Brief History of North American Bead Craft
Early American Indian tribes used shells, bones, seeds, stones, precious metals, organic and inorganic gems, and sinew to fashion their beadwork into beautiful belts, jewelry, dresses, handbags, headbands and multifarious leather goods. Exploratory pushes of the late 1400s introduced large Italian glass "pony" beads to North America. These beads were quickly adopted by both missionaries and French fur traders as an ever-popular bartering items. (It should be noted, however, that the first genuine glass seed beads were made around 200 BC in India.) In the mid-1800s, small glass seed beads were imported from the Bohemia region of the Czech Republic and were readily accepted as the standard fare. The Industrial Revolution made cotton thread accessible and it, too, became a beading material of choice.
Recent innovations include the development of nylon thread and the creation, in the early 1980s, of delicas. The Miyuki Factory in Japan designed these high-quality, evenly-sized glass seed beads which are cylindrical (as opposed to oval) in shape and have a much larger hole than standard seed beads.
Pictured above is a modern-style bracelet woven
on a loom using glass seed beads.
(Christina Myers, 2008.)
Visit THE GALLERY for more examples
of on-the-loom bead weaving.
Totems and Totem Poles
A totem is a natural entity adopted as an emblem by a specific society for its spiritual importance. Totems may be hung or carved into totem poles. Totem poles typically depict familial history as related to ancestral spirits and often include creatures like eagles and thunderbirds, bears, whales, fish, beavers, sea lions and wolves.
The inclusion of whales and sea lions in totem poles speaks strongly to their origins; although the word "totem" is etymologically Ojibwan (associating with kinship), totem poles were wholly created by indigenous tribes of the Pacific Northwest.
Favorite Outposts
Somewhere in the millennium, science marched on in Darwin, California.
