Hand-crafted Knot Jewelry:
Decorative Marlingspike Seamanship rendered in precious metal.
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This page contains several treatments of the single-strand lanyard knot, which makes flat sinnet with an odd number of leads. Ashley's Book Of Knots refers to one example as "based on five-strand French sinnet", but that is applied to a very short knot pictured in the book. None of these is that short, and I've also managed to extend the pattern to seven-strands.

Bracelets and necklaces made in these patterns are only possible in certain lengths. A minumum number of loops along the edge, then increased numbers of loops in multiples of five, in the five-lead sinnet, and seven, in the seven-lead.

Click here for some more images of seven-lead bracelets in this style.
Five part chain knot, nineteen loops, tripled, in fine silver.



This is a bracelet tied in pure silver, with nineteen loops along the edge. I touched the ends of the wire with the torch to ball them up, so there's nothing sharp, but I can see that it would probably tangle in knitted stuff. Still, it could be just right for someone.
Detail of bracelet end.



Here's a closeup of the end, showing how the wire "floats", not attached to anything. This one can be clearly seen to be a knot, and could easily be untied. (Voiding the warranty, naturally.) There is another example of this sort of work, in seven leads, at the bottom of this page.

Next, here's another single-strand lanyard knot based on the five-lead French sinnet, extended to 44 loops along the edge. Note, the above bracelet had nineteen loops -- the knot is only possible in increments of five loops, or multiples thereof, i.e., 9, 14, 19, 24, and so on.

Five-lead sinnet choker.
I decided to put the loose ends to use, and you can see in this close-up that they make a very nice clasp. I think that the ends should be balled, like the ones on the bracelet above, to make sure they don't feel sharp against skin, but that would make no real difference to the clasp's function.

Five-lead sinnet choker clasp.

Having proven to my own satisfaction that a single-strand lanyard knot based on five-strand French sinnet was possible, I had to go on and try a seven-strand example of it. This bracelet has the same look and feel as the one that I wear constantly, but as you can see, it is possible to remove it at will, since it has an opening.

Seven-lead sinnet bracelet.

(This site last updated on 12-12-2020)

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