Terry Barns, Knot Tyer

CLICK HERE TO BOOK YOUR TICKET . For all those with a fascination with ropes and knots, the Whitechapel Gallery is currently hosting the ROPERY, a free exhibition offering visitors of all ages the opportunity to engage in hands-on rope making, spinning, twisting and knot tying, until 30th August. ‘There isn’t really a word for it in English,’ admitted Terry Barns, ‘in French, they call it ‘matelotage’ meaning ‘sailors’ knot-making.’ Terry did not become a serious knot tyer until his fifties, yet it was a tendency that revealed itself in childhood. Celebrating the Queen’s Coronation in 1952, when Terry was just nine years old, his mother made him a guardsman’s outfit from red and black crepe paper with a busby fashioned from the shoulders cut out of an old fur coat. Terry’s contribution was to make the chin strap. ‘We got some gold string and I tied reef knots over a core, making what I now know is known as a ‘Pilgrim’s Sennet’ or a ‘Soloman’s Bar,’ he explained to me in wonder at his…