Tag: Embroidery
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Blackwork
Blackwork is the term for impressing design patterns onto the skin with black, sometimes red, color pigments, including temporary dyes such as henna and tattooing dyes such as soot. Produced with combs, needles, and cutting tools, using techniques such as hand-tapped, hand-poked, skin-cut, and skin-stitched, numerous societies practice blackwork to express cultural identities, rituals, histories,…
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Journey to the Other World
In Polynesian parable, to lift the sky meant to expand the known world. Each discovery enlarged the habitable world, raising the height of the sky. Polynesians envisioned the Sky or the Heavens as a huge cupola covering their sea and islands. The sky cupola housed all the stars and heavenly bodies. When the Europeans appeared,…
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The Fish Hook of Maui
The story of the Polynesian Demi-God Maui fishing up islands explains the creation of the Hawaiian islands. In Polynesian lores, “fishing up islands” means to discover different islands, or to fish islands out from the sea. The story of Maui wishing to catch a big fish as an analogy for uniting the Hawaiian islands goes…
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The Rainbow Bride
In the history of civilizations, there is but one record of fusion of two separate cultures: the Indo-Greek Kingdom, covering modern-day Afghanistan, Pakistan, and northwestern India. During the two centuries of their rule, the Indo-Greek kings combined the Greek and Indian languages and symbols and blended Greek and Indian ideas. The diffusion of the Indo-Greek…
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The Ides of March
“Soothsayer: Beware the ides of March. Caesar: He is a dreamer. Let us leave him. Pass.” – William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar In ancient Roman times, the ides marked the full moon of each month. Since their calendar began with March, it was the first full moon of the year. As the ides were sacred to…
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The Look of Love
If the 1960’s popularized twig-like Mod girls in mini-skirts and go-go boots and the 1970’s rebelled with the punk rockers, then the 1980’s ushered in the decade of the business woman. While women still earned less than their male counterpart, more and more were entering into high-status, high-paying jobs, and into power dressing. For a…
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The Pink Flamingo
To muse about the pink flamingo, one must first look back into the history of American landscape design to visit Andrew Jackson Downing, considered the father of American landscape architecture. A devotee of the English school of garden design, Downing designed landscapes for country estates throughout the Northeast early in his career, while aiming to…
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Bird of Paradise
Tourism is big business in Hawai’i. Between the balmy air, gorgeous sunsets, huge surfs, and all things American convenience, the stream of tourists flows non-stop year round. It’s pleasant enough to laze on the shore, admiring the view of pretty boys and girls running at them waves, licking up a cone of shaved ice, while…
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Man’s Best Friend
While the French Bulldog has reigned as America’s favorite canine for the last 2 years, our most beloved dog breed rotates between the Labrador Retriever, the Golden Retriever, and the German Shepherd dog. It’s no dispute that the dog is America’s favorite pet. The sheer number of movies with a dog as the star of…
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Schrödinger’s Cat
Schrödinger’s cat sits in a sealed box with a flask of poison and a radioactive source. The flask shatters upon radioactivity, releasing the poison, which should kill the cat. Who can tell the cat’s fortune? Quantum physics dictate that until the box is opened, there is no way to tell whether the cat is dead…
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