Shibari Shawn
Seattle rope educator who began tying in 2016, started teaching in 2019 and founded House of Knotty, a gay rope studio, in 2023. He has taught at events across the US and Canada, with a focus on queer rope and on tying the masculine form.
Shibari Shawn is a gay kinbaku artist and rope bondage educator in Seattle, and the founder and lead instructor of House of Knotty, which bills itself as Seattle’s gay rope studio. His studio biography says he came to rope in 2016 through Friction Iowa, a rope group at an SM club in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and began teaching workshops in 2019 through the Homer Shibari Dojo in Homer, Alaska.
Training
He does not name a single main teacher. His biography lists the events and teachers he has learned from: ROPECRAFT in Chicago and Shibari Study in 2018, the GRUE rope event in Wisconsin in 2019, and in 2020 online classes with Studio Friction in Denver, a suspension sequence series with VoxBody in Oakland, the online event Tethered to Wifi and Hajime Kinoko’s online series Meet the Master. Later entries include the Queer Rope Conference and NARIX Pacific Northwest in 2024, a class on Japanese traditional aesthetics with Kinbaku LuXuria, and private lessons in Tokyo in 2025 with Naka Akira and with Mistress Chiaki.
House of Knotty
He founded House of Knotty in 2023. The studio runs beginner and intermediate class tracks; its site lists beginner classes such as bedroom bondage, chest harnesses, sensual rope, predicament bondage, chair bondage and strappado, and intermediate classes including hogtie, agura, crab tie, partial suspension and hashira work. It also hosts a monthly rope jam without an instructor, a Sunday afternoon shibari tea dance and recurring hashira evenings. He also co-organizes RopeLab: Seattle, a monthly men’s rope group for intermediate and advanced riggers, and taught at the Pan Eros Foundation’s Gallery Erato in Seattle from 2022 to 2024.
Teaching elsewhere
His presenter pages list guest teaching at CLAW LA Leather Getaway from 2021 to 2023 and again in 2025, Can You Knot in Los Angeles and Rope Burn in San Francisco in 2023, Inferno 52 of the Chicago Hellfire Club in 2023, and the Burning Man camp Suspended Animation in 2023. In 2024 he taught at Men in Rope and Austin Kink Weekend in Austin, the Seattle Erotic Art Festival, Bight Club in Portland, Twisted Windows and MenRopingMen in San Francisco and Tickle Fest in Las Vegas. In 2025 he taught at Westcoast Bound in Vancouver, ROPECRAFT in Chicago, MenRopingMen in Seattle and Tying Masc Bodies in Chicago, and in 2026 at Devil Mask Studio in Los Angeles and Catalyst Clubhouse in Vancouver. At CLAW LA in 2023 he gave a keynote titled “Tie Me Tight: Sexual Agency, Hypermasculinity, and Consensual Non Consent.”
Approach
He says he wants rope teaching to depend less on social media trends and to be more accessible and better grounded in history. His teaching centers queer history and supports people who tie the masculine form, a group he considers underrepresented. He is an associate member of the Chicago Hellfire Club, serves on the education committee of MenRopingMen and has adopted the KEMS code of conduct.