Description
Arctic Clothing of North America: Alaska, Canada, Greenland is a collection of 25 essays and personal recollections presented at a conference held at the British Museum in 2001. Contributors include Inuit and non-Inuit artists and seamstresses, anthropologists, historians, curators and conservators with expertise in Alaska, Canada and Greenland. Topics include clothing and identity, the semiotics and function of dress, the significance of birds in Inuit life, ownership of design, and the ways in which creativity has been affected by rapidly changing traditional societies. Unique to this volume are the presentations about fish-skin clothing, the use of caribou and seal hair, wedding dresses, and kayak clothing. A remarkable 185 colour photographs are found in this resource. The editors J. C. H. King, Birgit Pauksztat and Robert Storrie provide a useful index, bibliography and a map of the Inuit communities located in Greenland, Alaska, and Canada. The range of topics and the wealth of illustrations including those of contemporary Inuit artists make this a valuable resource.