Sea Grizzly Chilkat Robe

Handspun wool and cedar bark, hand-dyed wool yarns
5 ft x 6 ft
Private Collection, North Vancouver, B.C.
Completed by Clarissa Hudson May 2000

Contact Clarissa for permission to use text or images for educational purposes only

After teaching Jennie's daughters and granddaughter, I regained my confidence and began to create small Chilkat weavings.  But naturally, the goal I was aiming for was to one day weave a full Chilkat blanket, a project which I knew would take at least a year to complete. Continued...

photo byJeff Laydon

In 1998, I received a commission that excited me.  A Native chief in Canada asked me to produce a copy of a famous Chilkat blanket which had once belonged to his family, but which now resided in a Canadian museum.  This robe was woven in the 1890s by Mrs. Jim Gotholas from Village Island (B.C.) of the Mamallillikula tribe. The design was a combination whale and grizzly bear. He said he could not repatriate the robe because he did not have any photographic or written proof that his clan had used the robe in ceremony and so "belonged to them," so he commissioned me to create a duplicate.

The chief wanted a duplicate Chilkat robe for his potlatch that he was planning: "I am setting the date of the potlatch according to when you will finish the robe." He sent me photographs and the exact measurement of the original robe. I was nervous. I was not sure if I could do this robe. This was my very first Chilkat robe. I had never woven anything larger than a pair of leggings before, so what made me think that I could do a whole robe!?

I thigh-spun 1000 yards of warp from merino wool with yellow cedar bark.  I purchased white and black 2/6 merino yarns for the weft, and with my husband's help, dyed the yellow and blue yarns matching Jennie's favorite shades of those colors.

Between caring for my family, finishing many other commissions, and moving from one town to another (twice!), I finished the blanket in just over two years.  The blanket was first "danced" in the fall of 2000 during the chief's family potlatch in western British Columbia.