About the Handicraft
What is Pewter?
Silver or Tin?
Actually, it’s both. And it’s also neither.
An alloy is made by combining a metal with one or more other elements to change how the material behaves. Pewter is a tin-based alloy, and its exact composition affects its strength, brightness, flexibility, and how it wears over time.
The pewter thread I use is made in northern Sweden from a tin-and-silver alloy. It is lead-free and nickel-free. The result is a soft, pliable metal thread that can be twisted, braided, and stitched by hand.
So your piece is not pure tin, and it is not sterling silver. It is pewter.
An alloy shaped by tradition, function, and time.
Pewter. A fabulous alloy.
A Brief Telling of a Long History
Sápmi is the traditional homeland of the Sámi people. It extends across what is now northern Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Kola Peninsula in Russia. Sámi history in this region reaches far beyond written records.
Across Sápmi, ways of life have always varied by land, water, season, and community. Reindeer herding, fishing, hunting, gathering, trade, and duodji have all played important roles. Some communities moved seasonally. Others built their lives around coastlines, rivers, forests, or settlements. Knowledge was carried through families, language, observation, and practice.
Before and alongside Christianization, Sámi religious traditions were rooted in relationships among people, the land, animals, and spiritual worlds. Sacred places and ceremonial drums held important roles, as did noaidi, who served their communities through spiritual guidance, ritual, and healing. Beliefs and practices varied across Sápmi.
Over several centuries, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Sámi people faced colonization, religious suppression, restrictions on land and livelihoods, and forced assimilation. These policies differed across four countries, but their effects reached deeply into families and continue to be felt.
Sámi culture did not disappear. It endured, changed, and continues today in language, land-based work, art, music, storytelling, and duodji. It is carried forward by Sámi people, families, and communities.
The Traditional Art of the Sámi
Duodji is commonly translated into English as Sámi handicraft, but “handicraft” is only part of its meaning. Duodji brings together knowledge, function, beauty, identity, and relationships with materials and place.
Historically, duodji included objects made for everyday life, including clothing, tools, containers, and adornment. Materials commonly included reindeer leather, antler, bone, wood, birch bark, and sinew. Over time, silver and pewter thread also became part of the tradition.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, when pewter-thread work had nearly fallen out of use, Andreas Wilks found his mother’s old thread-making tools. He studied surviving pieces, spoke with elders, and began experimenting with making and embroidering pewter thread himself. He later taught the craft across northern Sweden. Together with his wife, Syrene, his brother Lars, and his sister-in-law Sanna, he helped document old patterns and carry the knowledge forward.
Duodji differs across regions, languages, families, and individual makers. Colors, forms, materials, and techniques can reflect where a piece comes from and who made it. The work has never been static. It changes because it is practiced, and it continues because knowledge is passed forward through demonstration, repetition, correction, and patience.
Duodji is not simply a visual style or a collection of techniques. It is a living Sámi practice, carried forward by Sámi makers, families, and communities who continue to make, use, teach, adapt, and protect it.
Where My Work Begins
This is where my own work begins. I use traditional Sámi materials and techniques to create contemporary pieces by hand, one at a time. The pieces I make carry my voice, but the knowledge beneath them comes from a tradition much larger than any one maker. My connection to that tradition is personal, and I carry it with care.