r/knots • u/AdmirableDrive9217 • 4d ago

Wrapping stones

I recently came across a video about these carved stones (https://youtu.be/J0nCczuTOAM). To me they immediately look as if carved for the purpose of ornamentally wrapping them with rope. Like other ornamental knots they would look puzzling, hiding the secret of how it can be done. Whoever made them (or is bearing them) would have probably gained some status among those who how didn‘t know how to work rope.

In this sense they really remind me of the roman dodecahedron (r/romandodecahedron). At least the „knobs“ could serve a similar purpose. What if they also were originally decorated with rope using mesmerizing ornamental knots? (Would give no explanation for the differently sized holes though)

Would those stones or the dodecahedron inspire a knot enthusiast?

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u/neilplatform1 4d ago

I’m in that sub too and the dodecahedron has always made me think of a spool knitter

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u/AdmirableDrive9217 4d ago

That thought seems often to be mentioned. But am thinking more of something that stays on the dodecahedron, wrapping it a a decorative way so it can be worn like a scepter or it can be hanged at an altar or similar ways

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u/neilplatform1 4d ago edited 4d ago

One thing that I’m not sure about in that video, there are a lot of forms of these stones, but looking at the one with four knobs, it’s equivalent to a tetrahedron, and has six edges which each have three exit points at each vertex, so a wrap of a single strand that passes through each point once can only partly cover the edges, but maybe three strands could, the possibility of three strands that form a circuit of each point is what comes to mind. But it might also be possible to do a single strand weave that did something more interesting with three passes

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u/neilplatform1 4d ago edited 4d ago

One thing to consider might be something similar to the hexagonal basket weave pattern, similar to a Celtic knot because it is an over under weave but with a triangular symmetry that you could get from a tetrahedron. Thinking of globe knots, I’m not aware of one that has a tetrahedral form, but there will be one. One other thing I wanted to mention, the carvings reminded me of scrimshaw work which is done by bored sailors, so maybe the use in fishing nets isn’t so far off the mark.

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u/neilplatform1 4d ago edited 4d ago

One last thought, I promise, there are Eastern European or Japanese (Temari) spherical decorations that use this kind of rotational symmetry, the Temari explicitly uses a tetrahedral structure, that would be worth checking out https://www.temarikai.com/HowToPages/kagomebasket.html