Rock Art rolags - 100g

For these rolags I decided to focus on the oldest artists for inspiration. There are some wonderful examples of rock art produced by some of our earliest ancestors. The inspiration photograph is taken from Cueva de las Manos. The name means ‘Cave of Hands’ – a name given for obvious reasons.

The cave is a World Heritage Site, found at Rio Pinturas in Argentina. The area has many shelters and caves that were used by the hunter gatherer community. Some of the shelters contain hunting scenes and pictographs of animals like guanacos. However, the oldest images are the stencilled hand prints. It is thought that the images were produced between 9,300 and 11,300 years ago.

The handprints were produced using a variety of natural pigments, including iron oxides (red and purple), kaolin (white), natrojarosite (yellow) and manganese oxide (black).

It is believed that the hunter gatherers stencilled their own hands using bone blow pipes, to spray the pigments. Most of the prints are of left hands, indicating that they held the blow pipes in their right hands.

For these rolags, I decided that I wanted to incorporate the colours of both the pigments used by these ancient peoples, but also some of the colours of the rock that they used for their ‘canvas’.

I also decided that I wanted to add a little more texture than plain merino – although not too much, as the colours are beautiful and warm…. so the rolags would be nice to make into something warm and cuddly for the present cold weather.

The Rock Art rolag are made from:

Natural brown BFL

Grey baby alpaca

Blend of Fawn Shetland and Manx Loughton

Merino

Tussah silk

All of these fibres (except for the silk) will felt. If you do not wish them to, hand wash in cool water.