Jut-ke-Nay Hazel Wilson, a Haida artist and matriarch of the Duugwaa St'Langng 7laanaas clan of the Raven moiety, brought extraordinary imagination and ingenuity to the making of ceremonial story blankets. Raised in Old Massett on Haida Gwaii, Wilson began her apprenticeship at just fourteen, when the matriarchs of her family selected her to make appliquéd button blankets. For three decades, she devoted herself to traditional family crests, particularly Ravens and Frogs, before expanding her work into richly embellished compositions of remarkable intricacy. Adding gleaming brass, polished shells, shimmering beads, and other ornaments to the customary buttons, abalone, and copper, Wilson transformed these ceremonial robes into sumptuous surfaces of colour and texture. Her later story blankets carried Haida histories, ancestral narratives, and personal memories, each stitch and shining detail contributing to a deeply personal expression of cultural identity.

Heavy with materials, though never superfluous in their addition, this robe shows the early hallmarks of Wilson's personal hand in her art. A singular form, carefully cut from melton wool, is outlined and defined by glass beads, buttons, and colour, itself already a red punch against a blue backing. While this robe is a work of art to be marvelled at, its function and purpose as a robe cannot be ignored; the featured form, the Sun, with rays splaying out from its circular face, repeats its patterns and encircles the robe's wearer with lines of copper buttons. This robe is as much at home on a person's shoulders as it is on the wall, acting in both places as a celebration of its visualized form.

FA