Scarf 3 is a map of the winter sky, featuring some constellations that will be visible in the Northern Hemisphere in the coming month.

On New Years Day I saw a cherry tree in bloom in a Brooklyn Cemetery and thought about how in the not so distant future the stars may be our only natural way of knowing the time of year.

Hesiod’s “Works and Days” from around 700 BC contains a farmers’ almanac advising when to plant crops according to what’s visible in the night sky. Alas....

The constellation Camelopardalis (The Giraffe) wasn’t introduced until 1612, and some maps don’t render it as a figure since it doesn’t contain any stars of great magnitude. But its brightest star, α Cam, is one of the most distant visible with the naked eye.

The scarf is inspired by a beautiful drawing of the giraffe constellation featured in a set of English constellation cards, Urania’s Mirror, published in 1825.

Sophy Naess

Sophy Naess