One for Noah, One for Tali

After (what) 8 years of moving from Saipan to Portland, OR, Noah is coming home for a visit.  Last time I saw him was 2 years ago when Tali graduated from high school.  I wanted to give him something special - something that reminds him of his island roots, and that he will always be family to me.

It has been a while since I made one, but I cut a Spondylus (Thorny oyster) salape' or alas (money) pendant representing him, and a Tridacna (giant clam or hima in Chamorro) representing his big family (me included) always surrounding him with love and protection, no matter where in the world they are.  The Spondylus shell and beads were highly valued by the ancient people - nowadays, it is a symbol of their identity and connection to the past.   

Of course, I had to cut one for his big sister, Tali.  She got stuck in VA and pretty bummed that she couldn't visit Saipan.  I was bummed as well.  I will look forward to seeing her again, hopefully this year.

This bead is one of the prettiest I've ever found and cut.  Beauty and resiliency for my Tali.

I miss you both and love you very much.  Till we meet again...

Ti napu,

The Beachcomber

Mom's Egg - An artifact

I recently found some interesting artifacts that I wanted to talk stories with you about.  The artifact on the left is a broken off adze (higam in Chamorro) head made out of a giant clam (hima in Chamorro) shell.  I posted my journey in making some higam hima in this post.

At times, when you happen upon broken clam shells, it is hard to distinguish if they are artifacts from the ancient Chamorros.  This one was pretty clear in that you can see the straight edges that was worked on as well as the angled cutting edge.  I illustrated how the whole adze head could have looked like if it was whole.  There are some illustrations here from the The Catalogue of Prehistoric Micronesian Artifacts Housed in Japan (Intoh, May 1998) that I wrote about as well.

Mother's Egg
The artifact on the right is a mystery to me.  Some people who have found similarly shaped stones think that they are the ancient Chamorro sling stone is acho' atupat (or atupak).  I describe sling stones here when I fashioned some myself.  History books describe them as egg or acorn-shaped stones fashioned with “jasper-like” stone, or with sun or fire-hardened clay. People now use the words biconical or football-shaped to describe them.  The stone here is really in the "egg-shaped" category. 

A few years ago, I saw one displayed in the Saipan Museum that was very smooth and also egg-shaped.  A historian that I was acquainted with shared a very interesting theory that he had about these egg-shaped stones.  Maybe they are not sling stones.  He says that they could possibly be implements used by some of the ancient women to strengthen their pelvic muscles, much like modern day Kegel exercises.  Smiling, I had to ask how he came about that seemingly off-beat theory.  He asked if I ever wondered about the expression, i chada nana mu?  I told him that I know that it is the most offensive thing you can say to someone in the Chamorro language but literally, it translates to, "your mother's egg".  He asked me to consider the meaning of the expression now with this theory.  Interesting, yes?  Anyway, I didn't get to ask him if there were any other evidence in stories or in literature that may support his hypothesis.  What do you think?

 

Thank you for talking stories with me again.

Ti napu.

The Beachcomber

Can't Sleep Project

I couldn't sleep last night. I don't think I got enough rest since I got back and now my coughing has relapsed this entire weekend. I was pretty restless flipping through pages of my current reading materials and flipping through scenes of the movie I was playing. I was stuck in insomnia land and the sandman was nowhere in sight.

I noticed some cord laying around that I rolled together while I was on Managaha Island two weeks ago. I was invited by the SDA School to do outdoor classes and I decided to do a nature walk with the younger kids to talk about plants and natural history. At the end of the walk, I picked up a dried screwpine (Pandanus tectorius) leaf, ripped off the spines and started thigh-twisting the strands to cordage. The Chamorros name for this particular screw pine is pahong. I was surprised how tough the cord was after I rolled it. Here's a post with a tutorial on how to make cordage.
I also had a giant clam (Tridacna maxima) bead I took off from a necklace about a year ago that was just lying around unused. I decided to take it off of the nylon cord I had originally used and make a more natural piece. The Chamorro word for giant clam is hima and they called the shell money/ornamental beads, salape'.Hima is very difficult to cut and carve since its calcite-aragonite matrix is very hard, finely-packed and so crystal-like that it cracks easily when it gets heated. Here is the finished piece.
I had a few extra strands of the leaf to roll a smaller cord for the salape' attachment. It is pretty tiring to roll the tiny cord with your fingers.
I still need a lot of help with my technique. Can you see where I cheated? It's my secret.

Sadly, I did not have enough of the pahong leaf to use on the loop, and had to resort to using black nylon cordage. Here is a simple loop and knot for the necklace clasp.

Voila'. It's done.

Well, I am glad of the finished product since it is mostly all natural materials. I need more practice to really get the binding of these things done well. Come to think of it, I haven't had a lot of time lately to make any more necklaces.
I did accomplish to get sleepy after everything was done so the project suited me well for the time it took.

Ti napu.

The Beachcomber.

PS. Oops! I misnamed the leaf that I used. There are two types of native screwpines in the Marianas: Pandanus tectorius which the natives call kafu' and Pandanus dubious which is locally called pahong. I have a picture of both in this entry. Check them out in the Guam Forestry website.

Ingredients 2: I finished the adze

This is an update of my Ingredients post which was about putting together the items and the skills necessary to put together a replica of an ancient Chamorro adze. I'm happy to say that I am finished with the first and made another. I am still looking for ways to improve their construction and quality though. These tools are intended as replicas and for display only of course.

It took some time, research and a lot of trial and error but I am happy with the final products shown here in a couple of pictures. I remain amazed at how the ancient people manufactured these implements without the use of the modern tools. Although I used saws, electric grinders and polishers, sand paper, and anything convenient to cut, shape and bind, I believe I shared with them a very deep personal experience in crafting these tools.

This is Higam hima: Hacha (higam: adze, hima: giant clam, and hacha: one). This was my first attempt hence hacha, the ancient Chamorro word for one. In the Ingredients post about the adze, I referred to them as gachai, the name that was in the Chamorro-English Dictionary (Topping, Ogo, & Dungca). I found out later that gachai is from the Spanish word hacha that means adze or ax. So it is kind of funny that hacha means both adze and one! I will use higam hima from now out of respect and acknowledgment of the ancient language.

I kept the handle long for Hacha just to give it a more interesting character. I wound the binding on the handle where it is at most balanced to hold as a tool. Here are some details to the binding of the head of the tool.

Here's a top and bottom views to show the niyok (coconut) sennit binding and the hima blade.

Can you see the fine grain pattern of the niyoron (Cordia subcordata) wood? Niyoron is not a very hard wood but I wanted to use it for this project to bring awareness to its existence and importance as a native tree to the CNMI. Being so Flame Tree-centric, I bet you can ask many locals about niyoron and you would get a puzzled look not lot of information. You can probably blame this mostly on the lost carving traditions of the ancients. We need to be more aware of our native and endemic trees to appreciate them.

I really enjoyed the act of binding with the coconut sennit. The binding is the hardest step in all, and making rope is even harder. No, I didn't make the sennit but I am researching how it is done. I'll post a little later on how to make cords out of natural fibers. Here you will find a nice story put together by the Pacific Arts Magazine on traditional canoe making in the Solomons which has a small description of how coconut sennit is made.

There are many techniques to binding, such as being able to secure and hide the ends of the sennit. I spent a good deal of time looking for information in the absence of actual instructions in binding these tools. All the hard work pays of in the end though!This is Higam hima: Hugua (or two in the ancient Chamorro language). I salvaged the handle from a niyoron tree that was indiscriminately cut down to make room for one of Saipan's many strip malls. Guess what they have there now? You guessed right if you said pawn shop and video poker arcade!

The handle of Hugua is not as straight as Hacha giving it a much different look and balance. Hugua is a reminder to me that we must remain vigilant in preserving the natural environment against careless sprawl. Here are some head shots.

The limb of the wood that I used had a neat knot that I kept for the final product to retain a bit of that interesting character.

Below is another view that shows the fine grain of the wood on Hugua. For both higam I opted to keep them very simple and not adorn them with carvings or inlays to emphasize look of the raw materials. I kept the sanding of the wood a little on the rough side and finished it with tung oil to preserve the original grain quality. I also used a little wood glue just enough so that is retained in case the sennit unravels because of mishandling or dropping. I assume that natural gums or sticky saps were used in the past for this purpose anyway but did not experiment with those at this time.

I really want to put Hacha yan Hugua in the art show at Joeten Motors in September. I hope I have enough time to put together a few other crafts and illustrations to share. I hope you like the two adzes and thank you for allowing me to share with you my creative journey in making them.

Ti napu.

The Beachcomber

Haguet: fish hook pendants

Saipan Triguy, Lewie T. asked about hooks that the ancient Chamorros used for fishing on a comment on one of my earlier posts. On this post, I'd like to share with you a bit on what I found out for myself regarding this topic as I also wanted to experiment with making fish hook pendants.

Fish hook pendants are very popular nowadays since they look quite masculine, evoking feelings of strength, skill, prosperity and a cultural connection to the vast blue sea. The most popular designs are based on functional and contemporary Polynesian designs, especially from Aotearoa (New Zealand).

The ancient Polynesians did not have metal on their islands so other materials that were hard yet be carve-able were used for their fish hooks or matau. Materials such as shell, wood, human bone, and whale bone and teeth were utilized much like in Micronesia.

Because of their popularity though, there are a lot of low-quality mass produced Polynesian-style carved hooks that you can practically find in any tourist shop or on the internet. Even admiring a decent looking matau in Waikiki’s International Market did not guarantee an “authentic” Polynesian hook as I was told, “No. This one is made in Thailand.” Here are two pictures of a bone Maori-style matau that my good friend Greg M. got while vacationing in Bali. It doesn't look too bad really, and it even has some nicely carved designs on the bottom of it.
I like the stories though that come along in obtaining a unique piece. A lot of people belive that these special pendants contain Mana or spiritual power and the essence of the maker and then the wearer. I am really a big fan of the Polynesian matau designs and will probably make some in the near future. How did the ancient Micronesians design their fish hooks? I asked this question as I explored the idea of making my first hooks based more on ancient Chamorro or Micronesian designs.

Like the Polynesians, the ancient Chamorros also used shells, wood, bone, and teeth to manufacture this very important tool that was relied on for obtaining food from the sea. The Chamorro word for hook is haguet. (Incidentally, haguet is very similar to the Tagalog word for hook, kawit or kalawit, again showing an Austronesian connection in the languages.) The most abundant fishing hook artifact that archeologist have found are made from tree oysters or tooth pearl shells from the family Isognomonidae.

Isognomons are closely related to pearl oysters (Pinctada sp.) and are bivalves that are flat compressed-shelled animals that encrust rocks and mangroves. Their interiors are pearly. Here are a couple of tree oysters that I have found on Saipan:

This is Isognomon ephippium or saddle tree oyster (Linnaeus, 1758) which I found in Luta (Rota, CNMI) in August 2005. It usually grows up to 12 cm wide but this specimen is about half of that. Its exterior is dark and black and the shell is flaky. Inside is beautifully nacreous (pearly) and tinged purple.

These are Isognomon perna (Linnaeus, 1767), also known as false pearl oyster or rayed tree oyster, that I found in Obyan Beach, Saipan. They are nacreous inside and their exteriors are an off-white color usually with broken brown radial stripes.
Here is a picture from the CNMI Museum of History and Culture, Saipan that depicts the process of making a haguet from an Isognomon shell. I really wish I had a better close up picture because you can see that the finished haguet looks very different from the actual sea shell.

The finished haguet is looks crystalline because the shell is ground down to expose the aragonite mineral of the shell. Isognomons produce a bimineralic shell composed of calcium carbonate (outer layer) and aragonite (inside later), a carbonate mineral. It is a hard substance and luminous to look at. Here’s a website with great diagrams of the shell: http://www.futura-sciences.com/fr/comprendre/dossiers/doc/t/zoologie-1/d/la-coquille-des-mollusques-memoire-de-lenvironnement_662/c3/221/p3/

Unfortunately, these shells are too difficult to fashion because of their crystaline structure which are too easy to chip and break when they get too hot from cutting or polishing. They are generally small shells as well which isn't ideal for making pendants.

Compound trolling hooks were also produced by the Micronesians. Again, I consulted The Catalogue of Prehistoric Micronesian Artifacts (Intoh) to look at some examples. The following pictures illustrate the shank part of the compound hook that is made out of the black-lipped pearl oyster, Pinctada margaritifera (Linnaeus, 1758). The shank is cut from edge of the shell and away from the hinge. These illustrations are from artifacts found in the Marshall Islands and Pohnpei.

This is a picture of a P. margaritifera valve that I found. It is bigger than the palm of my hands. It has a beautifully nacreous interior. Its natural beauty prevents me from cutting it into different pendants!

Here's an example of how a trolling lure would look complete. These lures are from Yap that can be found at http://www.pacificworlds.com/yap/sea/fishing.cfm.

The shank is supposedly shapped like a small fish and the pearl oyster is used to simulate a shiny silvery fish that bigger predatory fish would eat. The point itself could be composed of shell, haggan (sea turtle) shell, or bone.

This is my first attempt at a stylized compound trolling haguet. As you can see, it is not yet finished but I am using a piece of nigas (Pemphis acidula) found during a beachcombing expedition for the shank and a beef bone point. I inlayed a piece of rectangular Spondylus on the shank and will have to decide on how to bind all the parts together. I decided to use wood and bone because I really do not have (or have anough of) the actual materials that the islanders used according to the examples that I have seen.

This is my first completed stylized compound haguet also made of nigas (Pemphis acidula) and a beef bone point. I read later after I was done making this hook that nigas was a preferred hard wood for making compound hooks on other islands. That was pure luck! Nigas is so hard that it is called ironwood at some of those places.

Here’s a picture of nigas at Coral Ocean Point, Saipan. The common name is small-leafed mangrove, but it is not a true mangrove. Nigas is a coastal tree that you usually see living on jagged coastal rocks. I read that they can grow into medium sized trees at places, but I’ve only seen them in bush form on Saipan. I also read that they are over harvested in many areas because they make good bonsai trees. Driftwood from this tree is usually a rustic gray but when you cut, shape, sand and polish it, it comes out as a rich dark brown colored wood.

Compound hooks are hard to make, but I will spend some more time learning a better way to produce them. Bone hooks need a little more investigating since the material is not as dense and is easy to scratch. I will need to do more research on how to properly make them, and even maybe order a book about bone carving.

Spondylus was not made into hooks by the ancient Chamorros. I wanted to experiment though and see how these would look like or how they would act as I fashioned them into hook shapes. Now, I am not the first person to fashion Spondylus into hooks mind you. I don't think a lot of people attempt it though because a good piece of Spondylus is an uncommon commodity. I've seen some designs that look as if the artisan was afraid to cut it. Mindfully so I say, since I learned that the fear is well placed as I have lost a few good pieces in attempting the twists and turns of a haguet. It is not easy!

This is my first attempt on making a Spondylus hook. I made it very simple out of a very solid fragment which held a beautiful intense orange color. I paired it with a hima salape’ (giant clam money) and a Spondylus salape’ toggle. Hima is very dense and it chips and cracks when heated making it hard to cut and polish. It was my first attempt with the material and the salape’ has tiny cracks that I decided to keep anyway to remind me of the learning process that I go through in this new hobby of mine. It symbolizes struggle and the hardness and skill you gain going through trials.

Here is another design. This has a hima salape' toggle and a Spondylus salape' on the left side of the cord. It is supposed to represent your korason (heart) and your love for the island.

Lastly, this is another stylized Spondylus haguet. The piece that I cut this from didn’t look too promising when I found it, but I am glad that I took the time to grind off layers from it until I carefully got the sheen that I wanted. This is a favorite piece. I paired this haguet with a Conus miles, or soldier cone salape’ bead.

Thank you for letting me share once again.

The Beachcomber.