Objects · CR-0005
Knotting on Silk
Hand-tied knot between each bead. A repair strategy disguised as a detail.
- Collection
- Objects
- Origin
- Widely practised; standardised in Japanese and European workshops
- First observed
- 2024-04-06
- First published
- 2024-08-19
- Last revised
- 2025-10-12
- Status
- In the archive · open to revision
Whose hands made it, what techniques were used, and how was that knowledge transmitted?
A knotter works with tweezers and a bee-waxed thread, setting the knot against the drill hole so it disappears. Forty knots is an afternoon.
What ecological, economic, political, or logistical systems must exist for this to exist?
The technique exists because materials were once too expensive to lose. It survives in workshops that still expect an object to be restrung, not replaced.
What does it ask of or do to a body, a place, or the senses?
You can hear it. Knotted strands are silent; unknotted ones click.
Provenance and method
Research methods
- Field observation
- Material or kitchen testing
- Documentary photography
Sources
- 1Field observationBench observation, knotter at work, forty knots timed.
- 2Maker or institutional documentationWorkshop restringing guidance, supplied by the workshop.
Revision history and errata
1 recorded revision
This entry can change. Every correction is dated and described here; earlier text is never quietly removed.
- First published
- 2024-08-19
- Last revised
- 2025-10-12
- Replaced 'an hour' with the timed figure of an afternoon for forty knots.