Fascinating String Figures

Collects instructions drawn from the pages of String Figure Magazine explaining how to create such string "sculptures" as "Twinkling star," "Polar Bear," "Erupting volcano," and "Andromeda galaxy"

Diagrams and text illustrate the steps involved in creating over one hundred string figures while providing information on their origin and cultural background

This book may be regarded as an introduction to the study of String Figures—games which are widespread among primitive peoples, and played by weaving on the hands a single loop of string in order to produce intricate patterns supposed to represent certain familiar objects. I have gathered together the facts already known concerning these games, and, adding my own studies and the unpublished records of other observers, I have here described and illustrated the methods whereby about one hundred string figures are made. My purpose has been twofold: to interest other students in the subject, in order that additional figures and their methods may be collected among various tribes and races; and to reach a still larger public, that more people may share in the fascinations of the games themselves. The games are certainly fascinating, appealing as they do to young and to old, and to those debarred from all pastimes demanding physical exertion. Moreover, they are not unduly difficult; and, capable as they are of infinite variations, their charm ought to be inexhaustible.

Provides directions, illustrated with photographs, for making many different string figures-- from the fairly simple Jacob's Ladder to more complex Mt. Fuji-- along with information about their history and meaning.

Rooted in tribal customs and cultural traditions from around the world, making string figures is an ancient pastime that continues to charm people of all ages. This compilation of projects from String Figure Magazine presents easy-to-follow photographs and simple, step-by-step directions for creating more than two dozen captivating string figures that can jump, flip, and perform other tricks. In addition to basic instructions on how to get started, this guide features brief accounts of each figure's historical background. They include "Kidnapped Baby" and "Broken Home, Mended Home" from Hawaii, "A Flock of Birds" and "Old Man Chewing" from the Solomon Islands, and the Australian "Setting Sun." From the Congo come "Leopard's Mouth," "Rubber Band" from Tibet, and from India, "Scissors." Other figures spotlight the traditions of North America's Navajo and Kwakiutl peoples and natives of Brazil, Guyana, and Argentina. A great travel pastime and on-the-go activity, making string figures is a delightful, inexpensive, and easily acquired hobby.

This is a new release of the original 1962 edition.

This book addresses the mathematical rationality contained in the making of string figures. It does so by using interdisciplinary methods borrowed from anthropology, mathematics, history and philosophy of mathematics. The practice of string figure-making has long been carried out in many societies, and particularly in those of oral tradition. It consists in applying a succession of operations to a string (knotted into a loop), mostly using the fingers and sometimes the feet, the wrists or the mouth. This succession of operations is intended to generate a final figure. The book explores different modes of conceptualization of the practice of string figure-making and analyses various source material through these conceptual tools: it looks at research by mathematicians, as well as ethnographical publications, and personal fieldwork findings in the Chaco, Paraguay, and in the Trobriand Islands, Papua New Guinea, which all give evidence of the rationality that underlies this activity. It concludes that the creation of string figures may be seen as the result of intellectual processes, involving the elaboration of algorithms, and concepts such as operation, sub-procedure, iteration, and transformation.