Turks Head Bracelets
The turks head bracelet is a rope bracelet made of turks head knots to make a continous braclet. The rope slowly shrinks down to the size of the wearers wrist so that it can no longer be removed. These have come from a nautical background and are often found in sea ports. The few people that I have seen with them cut them off after a year or two, becuase they start to look dirty and ratty.
This bracelet is woven using Turk's head knots. These knots date back to 1833 and are turban shaped knots worked on a rope with a small piece of line. Depending on where you live, these are known as sailor's bracelets (because they used to wipe their brows with them while swabbing decks), friendship bracelets (because sailors would bring them back to their sweethearts), and surfer's bracelets (for reasons unknown). 100% cotton to shrink to wrist size, as intended.the origin of the Turk's-head is unknown. There are several references to braids and turbans, but nothing substantial. The design does date back to Ancient Egyptians, and its been used aboard wooden ships for millennia.
Experience from an reader:
I went to Martha's Vinyard for vacation for a few days back in the summer of '96. Since I was going by myself to a place where no one would know me, I decided to wear several rope bracelets while on vacation that year, and see how much they would shrink. I put two rope bracelets on both wrists, and one on each ankle. For the ones for my ankles, I had to make them big enough to go over my foot by letting out some of the rope, then once on my ankle, take up as much rope as possible so they would fit nice and very snug on my ankles.
At the end of the week, the rope bracelets on the ankles obviously had to be cut off. I was able to slip off 3 of the four on my wrists; one of them had shrunk enough in a week so I couldn't slip it off, so that one had to be cut off!!
As a side note, I've seen Turks Head Knot rope bracelets worn on the ankles, seen them worn on both wrists at once, seen more than one on a wrist (the most I've seen on one wrist is five!!!). I've seen them not only in white rope, but in yellow, green, black, red, brown, and blue rope. As I've discovered over the years also, some shrink better than others, depending on the kind of rope that is used.
And I've chatted with a few dominants online who put them on their subs as marks of ownership, knowing that the bracelets are on permanently until they are cut of!!!