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estebanana -> RE: I might build a canoe (May 18 2017 6:10:41)
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Timeteo,
I am familiar with the skin boat of Unalaska, a very beautiful thing. I read George Dyson's book Baidarka when it was first published. I've been a fan of the skin boat ever since.
I showed this website: http://boat-building-plans.com and the boats to the guy who asked me build a canoe for him and he balked on the skin boat. I don't know why, maybe when I told him how much I want to build it. Sometimes people think that craftspersons just work for the good health and good will of making an object.
I think he wants a strip built canoe, and that will cst three times as much for me to make...he's going go to research and meet me again next Thursday. But I've lost interest now, I'm not excited about the project after I spend a ot of time invested explaining it and then have the customer get cold feet. I've learned from guitar making not to chase too far or spent too much time explaining if they are just kicking tires.
There are a couple of skin boats in the Hearst Anthropology Museum in Berkeley. I've seen them, they are not on display, but in the abyssmally defunct object storage facility. I applied for a position at the museum twice in 6 years, but I have the feeling they were only going through the motions of an interview because in both instances the position was withdrawn after a few weeks after interviews were conducted. I never knew why they decided not to staff the position, but in the first set of interviews I got to the last round and had to go back twice for three hours.
The second day of interviews was an exhaustive tour of all the object storage facilities, which meant I probably had the job in the bag, but like I said they withdrew the job. The object storage is mainly underground, the museum sits on land on the UCB campus and there is a huge green lawn next to the museum, a quad, under that is a vast network of halls, rooms, offices and two levels of storage. You don't get to see it unless you get taken under. The office for the museums NAGPRA project is located there, and i was told I'd be a part of that. Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act- making and loading special containers for transporting native remains that were in the collection. Then they showed me a special door, and we went through and entered a space surrounded by a chain link fence full of what looked like library shelving units...full of shallow boxes of bones.
I can't say what else I saw online, out of respect. We did go into another section where the artifacts were stored. A huge series of rooms, arrayed with tables and standing self units. I was particularly interested in one area where a bunch of boat models were stacked and separated by plastic sheets. There was an Egyptian funerary boat model, covered with dust looked straight out of a rock tomb. A bunch of other stuff like models of the Titanic, various warships, half hull models, and hanging above our heads suspended in two places by rope loops attached to the beams were two Unalaska skin boats.
The boats were cradled by ropes and where the ropes bore the weight of the boats they sagged under their own weight. Whomever rigged the boats for that storage area did not even think to cut a narrow length of wood plank support the the boats lengthwise. I knew something about skin boats so I mentioned to the curator handling me through the tour that I knew exactly how to mitigate the storage condition of these objects, the hanging boats, and she replied that it will be sometime down the line before this room is addressed as it is low priority on the budget.
I don't know if anyone ever addressed that storage condition, but I think a lot of object went to pot and rot in the so called 'object storage facilities ' of that place. If they had hired me I would have done the correction on my own time if it was not in the budget.
The second time I interviewed 6 or 7 years later I had done more work in the field, gained more experience and was still thinking about the condition of the skin boats. The interview panel asked me if I would be comfortable cleaning plexiglass vitrines and sweeping the gallery floor with a dust mop before the doors open. I said of course, I just want a job, but I happen to know a great deal about the collection here already and I eager to help in anyway.
They told me that they felt I was very overqualified for the job and offered it to someone else. The second time the job had changed and become less about the collection and more about housekeeping and gallery support for the curators. But I suspect they were looking for someone who was not ambitious or hyper engaged or intelligent enough to do hard research, because I would have mastered the collection. My prior experience had been that curators like dumb subordinates who don't outshine them.
Now that I have vented my spleen on the subject of dimwit curators, yes I would love to see the skin boat plans you so generously offer to share.
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