Every Pattern Begins
with a Puncture

A field built one fixed length at a time

A box from the Atlantic provinces can look almost painted at first glance. Look closer and the surface resolves into small, parallel decisions: a pink run stops, a red run begins, and each quill disappears through a punched hole in the birchbark. The pattern is assembled, not blended.

That distinction changes how we read the colour. Nineteenth-century makers used aniline dyes boldly—pink beside blue, orange against black—while the bark kept the work grounded. A ring, a spoke, or an eight-pointed star is not a printed flourish; it is a record of repeated pressure, spacing, and hand.