canoe maker

The second paddle featured on the Cherry Gallery's October Current Selections page is this classic styled Guide Paddle from Maine. It's been painted with contrasting red paint for the blade and black paint for the shaft / grip. Another big one at nearly 6' long...






Still not as big as this rediculously huge 96" Guide Paddle posted on earlier, but a handsome paddle nontheless.

It's been a while since the Cherry Gallery has posted anything paddle related. Their October current selections page features two interesting antique paddles. The first is a cute model paddle with a distinctive stepped style grip commonly seen in some Penobscot paddles which formed the basis for the classic "Northwoods Style" grip favored by Alexandra Conover-Bennett...

This post from 2012 discussed a book source for some of the double curved motifs used in some of my paddle decorations.  Frank Gouldsmith Speck's  Symbolism in Penobscot art (1927) has some wonderful imagery and thorough historical discussion of these motifs. Figure 12 on Page 43 describes a piece of birchbark used as a stencil template to make symmetrical patterns on a paddle blade.



Recently, I found a similar image on this twitter feed. Apparently an artifact in the Smithsonian's NMAI collection, it is a partial image of a bark template for an Abenaki paddle. I've been unsuccessfully searching for a more complete image with historical details, so for now this image will have to do...

A previous post describes the dimensions of Voyageur Paddles typically used by canoemen of the Hudson's Bay Company. It appeared in an article in the HBC's company journal, The Beaver. The September 1922 edition features a fur trade canoe with narrow paddles and an improvised sail from a scarlet red HBC point blanket.

The current August edition of the Wooden Canoe Journal has a stunning cover photo of a young Teen paddling a beautiful little canoe. Turns out the main article features 15 year old River Grace of Florida and his restoration job on a 12 foot Kennebec canoe dated to 1926. It is a lovely story of his patient restoration efforts which took over 4 years to complete. Unfortunately, no details were provided about the beautiful looking Northwoods paddle with a distinctive scalloped grip.  For anyone interested, there's a brief online article in Florida Today about this young lad and his canoe story.

Here's a photographic print featured on FineArtAmerica by Bill Curtsinger entitled The Bow And Oar Of A Handmade Wooden Canoe. 

Artist Robert Griffing is well known for his historical art depicting Eastern Woodland peoples and the 18th Century Eastern frontier. Many of his paintings feature bark canoes and decorated paddles. One of his new releases is entitled, "The Paddle Painter" and features a calming scene of a how a paddle might have been decorated with natural pigments in years gone by...