The Book of Knots

This is a true encyclopedia containing descriptions of more than three thousand knots and knotting techniques. The appearance of such a fundamental work became possible thanks to American Clifford Warren Ashley. He was born in the distant 1881 in New Bedford and became fascinated with drawing while still in school. Ashley received his initial artistic education in Boston at the Eric Pape Art School, followed by studies at other private art institutions in the USA. Soon, Clifford's illustrations started appearing in the pages of various American magazines.

In 1904, the monthly magazine «Harper's Monthly Magazine» offered Ashley not only to create a series of drawings dedicated to whaling but also to write the text about the brave whalers. Clifford approached this assignment with maximum responsibility and took a job as a sailor on a whaling ship. He spent six long weeks aboard the bark «Golden Ray» and during that time gained unique experience. Ashley's article with his own illustrations about whale hunting turned out to be magnificent. It was aboard the «Golden Ray» that Clifford's love for knots began. Ashley quickly realized that seasoned sailors knew hundreds of different knots, the knitting of which they passed down «from hand to hand», while literature on this topic was virtually non-existent. Ashley began to gather information about various knots and sketch the stages of their creation. He continued this collecting until the end of his life. His first publications on maritime knots appeared in 1925, and even then, Ashley had developed a distinctive way of presenting information on how to tie knots. Although photography was already quite advanced at that time, Clifford preferred to illustrate the knot tying process with his drawings, which were much more informative. The same situation later occurred in books on origami, which contain drawing schemes rather than photographs of the folding process. Ashley repeatedly found that even a person with no experience in this field could tie even a complex knot using his drawings.
Ashley's monumental work - his «Book of Knots» - was first published in 1944. Since then, it has been republished numerous times, consistently attracting the interest of not only sailors but also ordinary people. This encyclopedia owes its success to the simplicity and clarity of presentation, clear classification, and refined author illustrations. Knots are important both in maritime affairs and in everyday life. The fundamental work of Clifford Warren Ashley, published for the first time in Russian, allows for a genuine expert in this art form.