Isabel Rorick

Isabel Rorick is a Haida weaver from Old Masset, a village at the north end of Haida Gwaii, also known as the Queen Charlotte Islands. She comes from a long line of Haida weavers: her mother, Primrose Adams is a weaver, as was her grandmother Florence Edenshaw Davidson. Her great-grandmother, Isabella Edenshaw, was a well-known weaver of baskets and hats, many of which were painted by her husband, Charles Edenshaw.

Isabel began weaving cedar bark when she was only thirteen. Her paternal grandmother, Selena Peratrovich taught her to weave spruce root baskets from materials they had gathered at Masset. Isabel started to make hats in 1982. With help from her mother, her education was fortified by time spent at the Royal British Columbia Museum in Victoria studying the old Haida hats and baskets, some woven by members of her own family. At the Royal British Columbia Museum and at the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Quebec, Isabel studied the old patterns and finishing edges that she now uses in her own work.

Isabel and her mother are some of the only weavers in Canada making spruce root hats. Isabel does not weave on a hat form, which gives each hat a unique shape and size. She weaves a hat band into the inside of each hat according to the traditional design meant to keep rain and sun off of one’s head. Each of her hats takes approximately six weeks worth of eight to ten hour days to weave. Isabel’s signature mark can be seen in the three rings woven into the top of the hat. The three rings are often seen on her baskets and rattles as well.

Recently, Isabel has been creating rattles that address fragile ecosystems and the havoc that humans cause to upend the balance with strip mining, fracking and overfishing. In 2016 her son, Robin, began collaborating with her by painting her woven objects, echoing the tradition passed down from Isabella and Charles Edenshaw.