Thou Shalt Knot: Clifford W. Ashley

The New Bedford Whaling Museum celebrates the work of the master knot tyer, maritime artist, historian, and author Clifford W. Ashley in a monumental exhibition opening in one of the Museum’s most prestigious galleries. The exhibition includes the premiere of a recent gift to the Museum of Ashley’s private knot collection with interpretative material from the Museum’s private collection as well as the artist’s paintings, prints, and works by other knot tyers and artists inspired by his work.

In 2016, Ashley’s daughters, Phoebe Chardon and Jane Ashley, donated their father’s collection of knots to the NBWM. This includes many of the knots Ashley used as models for the almost 7,000 illustrations in his encyclopedic magnum opus, The Ashley Book of Knots, in continuous print since 1944. This unique collection greatly broadens the Museum’s capacity to represent Ashley in a new light and adds to the significant holdings of decorative and utilitarian knots acquired by the Museum over the last hundred years. Thou Shalt Knot celebrates Ashley’s contributions to this most fundamental and ancient of tools within a larger cultural, social, industrial, artistic, and utilitarian context.

Knots are woven into the human experience, to our success as a species, and they permeate every part of our lives. They are integral to the ships we sail, the clothes we wear, the hair we braid, the memories we keep, our colloquial expressions, the games we play, the shoes we tie, the presents we give, the fish we catch, the social contracts that bind us. They keep us at anchor, exercise our minds, bind prisoners, and help us climb mountains. They have spiritual, religious, social, and historical connotations in story-telling, rituals, fertility, counting, record keeping, and mapping. We tie one on, we spin yarns, we tie the knot, we get tongue-tied, we measure speed in knots, depths in fathoms, we get tied up in knots, we are fit to be tied.

The Ashley collection of knots is a focal point of the show. In addition, the exhibition includes a broad range of fascinating objects with which to interpret the material drawn from the NBWM permanent collections, partner institutions, and private collections, including “Turk’s Head” knotted scrimshaw canes, sailcloth, sailmaker and knot tying tools, examples of various fibers, Victorian braided mourning hair wreaths and jewelry, portraits, textiles, knots collected worldwide by whalers and merchants, rare books on rigging and knot tying used shipboard, decorative knots, paintings, prints, and original book illustrations that predate and postdate Ashley. 

Videos of knot tying, rope making, and interactives on the mathematics of knots are on view, and rope making machines and other tools are on hand for visitors to explore. The exhibition also includes modern works in various media that speak to a contemporary understanding and meaning of knots, including macro views of rope in large graphite works on paper and static ceramic sculptures of rope and sailcloth.

Credit: Exhibition overview from museum website.

Whether or not you go, the accompanying publication Thou Shalt Knot: Clifford W. Ashley spotlights noteworthy objects from the exhibition while delving into the life of Ashley, who was a master knot tyer, maritime artist, historian, and author. The book illustrates how knots are both ancient and modern, and how they are the subject of cutting-edge research and ongoing practice in mathematics, physics, life sciences, materials engineering, and art, not to mention within a wide range of industries and recreational pastimes.

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