Oil lamps and rectangular cooking pots were made from soapstone (talc chlorite schist). The woman who tended the lamp would take a piece of blubber several centimetres wide by thirty or more centimetres long and pound it with a muskox horn (illustration 13) in order to break up the fat cells and release the oil. This was placed in the well of the lamp where oil accumulated and soaked into the cottongrass (Eriophorum angustifolium) seeds that served as a wick. The seeds were placed in a continuous line along the lip of the lamp with their lower edges in contact with the oil. This wick was pinched up into little points every five or six centimetres and then patted with a trimmer, thus producing a steady, smokeless flame which rose about two centimetres. As the heat melted the oil out of the strips of blubber, they were removed to the back shelf of the lamp until they drained.
The soapstone pot was suspended a little more than a centimetre above the lamp flame and was used to boil seal, caribou and other meat.
Courtesy: National Museum of Man, National Museums of Canada (S80-255)
