A couple of months ago, I spent a fair amount of time looking through collections of playthings at the Australian Museum. My intention was to find something specifically Aboriginal, to add another piece to this expanding jigsaw puzzle. There were many options to choose from, and for a while I concentrated on looking at different examples of weet-weets (or wit-wits), which are long sticks that are thicker and slightly bulbous at one end, and which hop or bounce when thrown. Weet-weets are one of several Aboriginal playthings that are especially good for throwing – other good throwing toys are piar-piars or little fella boomerangs, which are made out of folded pandanus leaves, propeller toys, or ‘proper’ toy boomerangs. There are also wonderful collections of shell dolls, which I am sure I will revisit at some point.

I was especially intrigued, however, when I saw this entry for a simple, old string. It is labelled ‘cord’ but one of the photographs shows a label stating it was used to ‘make string figures.’ After a couple of related searches, I saw it was connected with the collection of 192 mounted string figures made by Yolŋu (Yolngu) people from Yirrkala (Arnhem Land) – see ‘Kangaroo track’,  ‘Amaeowa (Freshwater Goanna), or ‘Two Nail Fish’.

These string figures were collected by a curator at the Australian Museum named Fred McCarthy during the Australian-American Scientific Expedition to Arnhem Land, northeast of Australia’s Northern Territory, in 1948. For the majority of the figures, McCarthy worked with Ngarrawu Mununggurr – a young woman in her 20s from the Caledon Bay area – as his principal informant and collaborator [for more information, see chapter on these string figures by Robyn Mckenzie, in ‘Exploring the Legacy of the 1948 Arnhem Land Expedition’]. McCarthy noted that Yirrkala men used string figures for ceremonial purposes, whereas for women and children they were an everyday activity. The collection is the world’s largest known collection of string figures from one community made at one time.

I was relatively acquainted with the basics of cat’s cradle games I had seen in Europe but was curious to find out more about where this type of string figures fit in. As with other universal games, a light scratching of the surface was enough to reveal a remarkably far-reaching presence of string figures across the world.

It was fascinating to see them widely being used for storytelling, and to marvel at the parallels between the use of strings in cultures from opposite sides of the globe.

Take a look at this 5-minute video of David ‘Kitaq’ Nicolai, from Alaska, who makes a brief demonstration of his string figure making skills within the context of Alaskan Native string storytelling.

Another video from someone based in New Mexico shows their Navajo grandmother telling string stories and games, including ‘how coyote had placed the stars in the sky and [she] shows how to make two constellations using string, Dilyéhé (the Pleiades) and So' Bidee'í (Star With Horns).’

Here we are given an overview about what string stories and games (Pülalkantun) are used for in the Mapuche culture in Chile and parts of Argentina: to tell stories and myths, represent natural phenomena, and to ask for a good crop.

You can watch young Japanese children demonstrating their Aya Tori or string figures, and then compare with the string figures demonstrated by Yirrkala artists (and children towards the end). There is even an International String Figure Association (ISFA), with specific home pages for Japan, Israel and France. Surprisingly, Wikipedia seems to have a very thorough list of string figures, possibly contributed by the ISFA.

Looking at this string, I realised that one of the reasons I found it appealing was that it could be from any time or place and could have been used for any number of purposes. This led me to look up the oldest string found to date: it was found in 2020 in the Abri du Maras caves in France and is estimated to be around 50,000 years old, made by Neanderthals. According to an article in the New Scientist:

‘[…] It suggests that Neanderthals knew how to twist fibres together to make cords – and, if so, they might have been able to craft ropes, clothes, bags and nets.
“None can be done without that initial step,” says Bruce Hardy at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. “Twisted fibres are a foundational technology.”  […]
It was made by twisting a bundle of fibres in an anticlockwise direction, known as an S-twist. Three bundles were twisted together in a clockwise direction – a Z-twist – to make a 3-ply cord.
“It is exactly what you would see if you picked up a piece of string today,” says Hardy.’

My mind shifted to thoughts about language and how we organise the world in our minds. Specifically, I thought about conjunctions and prepositions, and about strings as physical embodiments of these (or was it conjunctions and prepositions as linguistic strings?) And, to, with, from. It was interesting to ponder about strings as foundational links enabling us to articulate physical relationships between things, and between us and the world.

Later I read a piece written by Robyn McKenzie in which she says:

In Yolngu culture in North-Eastern Arnhem Land, string features in myth as an attribute of ancestral beings, attaining a sacred resonance and power. Lengths of decorated string are festooned from poles in ceremony, symbolically linking different clans and their territories together, and linking past, present and future generations.

McKenzie researched the Yirrkala string figures collection for her PhD and wrote the above piece for an exhibition called ‘String Theory’ held in 2013 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, which included, among other things, etchings created by Aboriginal printmakers, based on the original string figures collected in 1948.

The exhibition of these prints represents an interesting sort of journey, in which elements from a world of ephemeral, performed traditions were made static and permanent, classified and grouped into a collection at the Australian Museum, and then, many years later, served as the basis for a series of etchings. As a fellow printmaker, I have always enjoyed the chance to make fleeting things permanent and repeatable.  Something alchemical happens when you take physical actions and record them in this way – in this case, there have been so many phases to this transformative process that the objects have become a new thing altogether. McKenzie says:

I can’t help but feel these prints have a melancholic beauty like the collections on which they are based. But abstracted from that history, passed through the roller of the printing press, displayed in the white cube of the gallery, they are becoming something else.

I, too, find the etchings beautiful. Take a look at this etching (2010) by Ms. M. Wirrpanda of a string figure of a Biyay/Goanna, or this etching of a string figure of a Damala/Sea Eagle, made by Nyangungu Marawili (2013). I particularly like that McKenzie mentions the printmakers – mostly older women, including practising artists, who had not played with strings in years – being reacquainted with these traditional string figures and relearning how to create them in the process of printmaking. Given that they are soft-ground etchings, I presume they first made the string figures and then carefully laid them on the soft ground to create the impression.

We have inside knowledge about this string – we know it had a past life, when it was in movement, an extension of someone’s hands. We can imagine it being a kangaroo track, or a goanna, or two fish. We can imagine it being pulled taut – by fingers, and sometimes even by toes and mouths! – to fleetingly take on the pared-down shape of a recognisable figure. Why? Because it is delightful.