The Two Knotty Boys, 2000s, is a American platform in the bakushi / kinbaku ecosystem.
2000s
Era: 2000s
San Francisco-based Western rope-bondage instruction project by Dan and JD, presented on their official site as professional riggers, workshop teachers, performers and photo-shoot riggers. Their 2006 book Two Knotty Boys: Showing You the Ropes and later Back on the Ropes made them a visible pre-social-media English-language rope-instruction source outside Japanese shibari lineages.
People associated with The Two Knotty Boys: Giotto Shelton.
Bakushi Map BETA
An interactive genealogy of bakushi and kinbaku —
the Japanese rope traditions that grew from Edo-period hojōjutsu
through twentieth-century SM magazines into today's global
shibari scene.
The map currently holds 320 people,
238 studios, events, works and context nodes
and 1394 documented connections across
9 eras. Each record is sourced
from public material — Nawapedia, ShibariStudy, festival
rosters, interviews, archived studio pages — and curated by a
single researcher.
This is a beta version: the structure, sources
and interface are public enough to explore, but the map is still
being expanded and corrected.
How to read it
Vertical position is time: the 1800s at the
top, the 2020s at the bottom. Cards are coloured by
school or lineage; lines between them carry
the relationship type — solid amber for direct apprenticeship
(deshi), dashed for influence or peer study, thinner
coloured lines for venues, magazines, or productions. Click a
card to open its bio, antecedents and descendants. Filters in
the top bar narrow by era, entity type, or relationship.
Caveats
Inclusion is selective: a person or studio appears only when
there's enough public evidence to anchor them meaningfully.
Missing birth years are deliberate — many practitioners don't
publicise them. Errors and gaps will exist; corrections
welcome at pussynawa@proton.me.