TORTOISE

linda corbett 2025©

TORTOISE

Nepalese hand-knotted carpet
100 knot /sq. inch - 6 Colours
100% Tibetan Wool & Chinese Silk
111”w. x 126”l / 3.2m x 2.82m

This luxurious silk and wool carpet, with its various textural pile heights, was inspired by the carapace, or hard upper shell, of a Kenyan Pancake Tortoise.

"Indigenous peoples believe the turtle bears the world on its back and is a symbol of protection and perseverance. First Nations petroglyphs bear the image while clan names, oral histories and legends tell the story of the turtle."

An Eastern Ontario Snapping Turtle lays her eggs on our rural property

Charcoal / pastel drawing of the Pancake Tortoise

One of the software stages of the design process

THE PANCAKE TORTOISE CARPET

One June morning we woke to the sound of our two dogs barking an alert. Five primordial beasts with strangely lumbering, dinosaur-like gates were crawling towards our house. We had been invaded by Snapping Turtles.

As the sweltering sun rose in the sky, we discretely observed them each find a spot then kick the sandy earth up behind them with their thickly horned back legs. Over the next hour, they laid several white eggs in the small holes beneath their tails.

After carefully covering the eggs they leisurely crawled back towards the river over 200 feet away and slipped into the water. Their unhurried pace proclaimed they had few predators.

"Indigenous peoples believe the turtle bears the world on its back and is a symbol of protection and perseverance. First Nations petroglyphs bear the image while clan names, oral histories and legends tell the story of the turtle."

That day we were inspired by this intimate encounter with the natural power of the turtle.

Not long after a client, who is a biologist, published his work with the endangered Pancake Tortoise at the Lewa Wildlife Conservancy in Kenya.

The pancake thin creatures live in rock crevices so a major hazard for him when searching, documenting and recording the tortoises was avoiding snakes. His field study photos of the Pancake Tortoise were the starting point for this carpet design.

I began by making a series of charcoal and pastel drawings using the field reference images. Next I digitized the drawings and manipulated them through a series of software stages. In the final stage the design emerged as a size-as, knot-for-knot pattern showing the exact colour of each knot the weavers would follow to make the hand-knotted (100 knot per square inch) carpets.