Quill Box View Four: History and Future of Quill work

History and Future of Quill work

Individual maker intention, and respect for knowledge shared by teachers before mean that there may be intergenerational influences on design, and original takes that build on teacher's before. Quill work was very clearly a responsibility that was shared by the community, almost everybody had a job that was theirs to complete, it was a collective effort and traditionally the men who hunted the porcupines using many different methods to do so, every creator is different and has been taught a different way of doing things, it is so amazing that so many people can create such beautiful things in so many different ways. While there are different traditions and relationships between the maker and the box for different regions and teachers, everyone brings their own understanding and individual intention with them when they are creating a piece, they bring their own background with the craft and their own skill as well as their own person intentions for the creation which greatly diversifies the process and leads to the amazing variability that we have in the craft, and the different interpretations one can possess where a historian may see something a maker may see something differently. (1997, Fonicello) Indigenus creators would have their own ways of procuring their materials, many contemporary artists don’t have the same opportunities to be involved in every step of the process, they may not collect and prepare the quills, but they may sort them and so on. Every process of creation is incredibly valid and has their own merits and is greatly dependent on where and when their teacher learned about the craft, who a creator learns from has a massive impact on how one goes about the creative process. (2015, Fort, Kate, et al.) (2015, Native American Porcupine Quillwork)