A variety of knots. Top row, from left: surgeon’s; stevedore; sheepshank; sheet bend. Middle row, from left: monkey’s fist; true lovers’; figure-eight; bowline; thief; reef. Bottom: carrick bend.
Knot enthusiasts like to say that civilization is held together by knots. It sounds like a wisecrack — but if you take a look around, you may begin to see the truth behind the quip. You could start by scrutinizing your shoes. They’re tied, undoubtedly, with the first knot that you ever learned, the famous shoelace knot, or bowknot, or as some knot experts prefer to call it, the double-slipped reef knot: a knot that combines a simple half-hitch with those two bunny-eared loops to create an ingenious little mechanism, taut enough to keep your feet snugly sheathed but with a built-in quick-release that can free them in an instant, with a single tug on a string. Glance in the mirror and you may find more knots: the one in your necktie, perhaps, or the one made by the elastic band that is wound around to hold your hair in place. Your hair itself might be plaited into a braid: another knot. (...)
Knots are an ancient technology. They predate the axe and the wheel, quite possibly the use of fire and maybe even man himself: Some scientists have speculated that the first knotters were animals, gorillas who tied simple “granny knots,” interlacing branches to construct nests. But in a century of digital tech and robotics, knots remain indispensable. On the deck of NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, cables are bundled and tied down with a variation on the reef knot, used by mariners thousands of years ago to trim their sails, and the clove hitch, a knot that entered the historical record in the first writings of the Greek physician Heraklas.
In other words, knots are ubiquitous — so threaded, as it were, into the fabric of everyday life that they are easily overlooked, hidden in plain sight. In certain quarters, though, knots command center stage. One such place is a house that sits along a well-trafficked residential through street a couple of hundred yards from the River Orwell in the town of Ipswich, in Suffolk, southeast England. It is a modest two-story brick building of Edwardian vintage, distinguished from neighboring houses only by a telling detail: a forged iron door knocker in the shape of knotted rope. Use that door knocker and you will be greeted by Des Pawson, a vibrant 67-year-old man with large round eyeglasses, a white beard worthy of a biblical patriarch and hair that stretches down nearly to his shoulders. Pawson’s mane is partially concealed beneath a red Kangol cap. “I’m a socialist, of a sort,” Pawson says. “I want the rope makers, I want the riggers, I want the sailmakers to be recognized for their contributions. They are a huge part of the story of knots.”
Pawson is one of the world’s foremost knot experts, a co-founder of the International Guild of Knot Tyers, and a prolific author of knotting books. His home, which he shares with his wife, Liz, is a shrine to knots. In a sun-flooded library on the ground floor, there are pieces of rope and fish netting dangling from timber beams, dozens of nautical paintings and artifacts, and rows of old bottles of Stockholm tar, also known as pine tar, a substance used to weatherproof rope. The bookshelves that line all four walls are packed with what may be the world’s largest private collection of knot literature. (...)
If you exit Pawson’s library through the back door, you step into a verdant garden, where stone footpaths wend past apple and plum trees and rows of honeysuckle and rose bushes. Follow those paths, and you will find yourself facing three small wooden buildings — the main attractions of Pawson’s knot reliquary. There is a workshop where Pawson makes ropes, his stock-in-trade for the last quarter-century. Nearby there are two larger sheds. This is the Museum of Knots and Sailors’ Ropework. Pawson opened the place in 1996; in 2007, he was awarded an M.B.E. (Member of the Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth “for services to the rope industry.” Pawson’s museum, likely the only institution of its kind on earth, is open by appointment only. “You don’t just pop up out of the blue,” Pawson says. “You know, I’m not here for mum and the kids because it’s a wet day and they don’t know what to do.”
by Jody Rosen, NY Times/T Magazine | Read more:
Image: Tobias Harvey
