Weaving in Beauty

One of the participants in our seminar completed her first rug today.  Barbara Spelman is an accomplished fiber artist and a partner in Crone Craft Studios in Tucson, Arizona, which makes her a busy person.  Once a year, Barbara comes to Window Rock to study Navajo techniques and has applied many of them to her other work, particularly in the area of dyes.  Over the course of the past four years, Barbara has diligently worked on her weaving when she could and today, her efforts were rewarded.  Here’s a brief video of the big moment!

Barbara carefully folded her rug, and she and Jennie Slick promptly started on another warp.  Tomorrow, we’ll catch up with the other seminar participants projects.

This was day two of our weaving seminar in Window Rock and we were pleased to have a visit with Morris Muskett who is an accomplished weaver and silversmith as well as a civil engineer with the New Mexico Department of Transportation.  (Full disclosure:  I also do Morris’s web site).  Morris’s work encompasses an incredible range of genres and materials.   Some his work is traditional and classic,  some is contemporary and edgy and we thoroughly enjoyed talking weaving, jewelry and art in general with him.  Be sure to check his site for a look at what he does.

The weavers in the seminar are continuing work on their individual projects and two of them, Liz Munk and Roberta Sauerwein are working with raised outline, a complex technique that introduces surface texture to one side of the weaving.  It’s a manipulation of a basic striping technique that Navajo weavers call Coal Mine or Railroad Tracks and conventional handweavers call Pick and Pick.  Basic Navajo weaving is a plain weave technique in which weft yarns go over one and under one thread in each row.  If the weft travels under the thread in one row, it will go over it on the next row meaning that there are two positions or “sheds” for the warp threads to be in.  In the Coal Mine technique, all of the wefts going from right to left are one color and all of the threads going left two right are another color.  Navajo often say the threads are “chasing” each other.  Raised Outline introduces further complexity by varying the colors in the rows as they travel through the row.

Here’s a look at the start of Liz’ project in which she’s also using variegated yarn dyed by Marilou Schultz.

Liz Munk's raised outline project.

Liz is combining areas of Raised Outline with plain weave.  Here’s view of the raised outline area close up.

Detail of the Raised Outline portion of Liz' design.

Roberta is going for a curved look to the raised outline area that she’s working on right now. She’s doing that by flattening the points in a jagged line to create the illusion of a curve. The contrast of the colors she’s using make it easy to see the outlined area.

A detail of Roberta's weaving.

Tomorrow, I’ll post some pictures of the weaving that class insructor Jennie Slick is doing.

I’ve just learned from a reliable source (the owner of the rug) that Jennie Slick’s Third Phase Chief Blanket weaving has won a second prize ribbon at the 87th Inter-tribal Ceremonial currently underway in Gallup, NM.  I’ll be attending  the Ceremonial this weekend, so I hope to have more reports on the weavers and weavings at the event.

Here’s a picture of Jennie (on the right) with her prize winner and it’s also in this year’s Weaving in Beauty Calendar.  That’s Jennie’ mother, Anna Ashley, aged 90, on the left.

Weaver Jennie Slick (right) and her mother Anna Ashley with Jennie's prize winning Third Phase Chief Blanket.

In an earlier post, I made a reference to the Bisti area and received a question about the characteristics and history of the Bisti style of weaving.   Many people have never heard of a Bisti rug and if they’ve seen one, they may not have recognized it.  The name Bisti comes from the region where the rugs were woven and refers to an area that runs south from Farmington, New Mexico towards Chaco Canyon and Crownpoint, New Mexico.  The western boundary is probably highway 491.  Bisti meands badlands in Navajo, and when the Navajos call something a badland, they’re not kidding around.  To get an idea of the look of the area, check this article from the Desert USA web site.  Although it is not an easy area to live in, there are some Navajo people who make their homes there and the weavers have developed two related weaving styles, namely the Bisti rug and the Burnham rug, which developed later.

I think that there are two main features that identify a Bisti rug; the design geometry and the presence of yarn dyed with wild carrrot, with the geometry being the most important identifier and the dyestuff helping to fix the location.  The hall mark of the design is a complex of ordered and connected keyed structures.  Often, but not always, prayer feathers and other pictorial motifs are used as design elements.  One of the best Bisti examples I’ve seen is a rug that I repaired last year.  You can see it below being held by Jennie Slick (left) and Milt Shirlson (right).

This rug also shows the other hallmark of Bisti weaving, wool dyed with wild carrot.  Wild carrot or canyaigre is a form of rumex or dock root that grows in areas of the Navajo Nation that have sandy soil.  In some areas around Bisti, wild carrot is one of the few plants that can be used to yield a natural colorant for wool  In fact, it is one of the most stable of all the natural dyes used by the Navajos and I’ll post more on it toward the end of next week.  Aniline red dyes were also often used in Bisti weavings, but that and wild carrot are usually the only two dyed colors present in a Bisti rug.

The rug above was woven toward the end of the most active period of the Bisti style, sometime in the 1940’s or 1950’s.  The earliest examples of the style go back to the early 1900’s, when Navajo textiles were in the transition from blankets to rugs.  These early rugs were tradied mainly to the Burnham family at the Bisti and Burnham trading posts, but some were probably traded in Shiprock and Farmington and many went into homes in Durango, Pagosa Springs and other areas in southern Colorado.

I have seen Bisti style rugs referred to as variants of Teec Nos Pos rugs, and the two areas are relatively close to each other geographically.  A bordered Bisti rug can look similar to a Teec Nos Pos in terms of design density (the amount of design versus open space), but does not share the same design motifs or geometry.  As the Bisti design developed, the use of geometric elements increased and the distinct pictorial style that is referred as a Burnham rug emerged.  An early example that’s right on the cusp between the two styles is seen below.  It’s owned by trader Buce Burnham and was woven for his grandfather.   I’m not aware of any weavers doing a distinct Bisti style today, but Burnham rugs are being woven by the Begay/Barber family and other weavers both in the Bisti area and in other locations.  The Crownpoint Rug Auction is one of the best places to see these descendents of the Bisti Style.

Emily Malone and her family, also known as the Spider Rock Girls, are on the forefront of weavers looking for new outlets to sell their work and have their own web site as well as an Ebay account.  Emily’s just finished this Transitional Burntwater rug and it’s on Ebay this weekend.  She’s also entered it in the Inter-tribal Ceremonial.   She’s certainly got a killer background for her marketing pictures!  Yes, she’s standing on the rim of Canyon de Chelly and that’s Spder Rock in the background.  I just wish she wouldn’t stand so close to the edge!

One of the ways to gauge the quality of a textile is to count the threads in an inch of weaving.  The more threads per inch, the finer the cloth.  Anyone who has ever slept on 800 count sheets knows how much difference this can make.  In Navajo pieces, both the warps and wefts are counted. These are numbers that you may see in auction listings or in scholarly works on Navajo weaving, and it is an indicator of the feel and drape of the fabric.

The warp threads are the threads that you don’t see.  When a rug is woven, they are the vertical threads and they are completely covered by the weaving process.  If there are warps showing, that’s a decrement in the value of the textile.  To count the warps, use a ruler or measuring tape and lay it across the rug horizonally in an area where the pattern doesn’t interfere with a clear view of the weaving.  It can be very hard to count threads when you’re trying to deal with the pattern at the same time.  As you can see in the picture below, the warps show up as columns that you can count.  If you have difficulty seeing up close, use a magnifying glass or magnifying ruler to help you.   Here’s an example with the warps counted to help you get started:

Now, let’s count the weft threads.  This can be a little trickier because the wefts are generally more irregular, but the idea is the same.  Lay a tape measure along an area where your can see the wefts without too much interference from the pattern and count the weft bumps along one column of warp.   Once again, I’ve shown you the count.

What’s the total weft count on this piece? Textile analysts can disagree here. Some will say the count is 13 rows per inch, reasoning that it takes two passes to make one row. They’re not weavers, but some of them are really good friends of mine anyway.   A weaver will tell you that there are 26 rows, since the threads must be manipulated in each direction traveling from left to right and then right to left.

I would count this piece as 8 warps and 26 wefts per inch, a relatively blanket like weave with a nice drape.  Remember that counts can vary in different parts of a textile, so don’t agonize over a difference of one thread here or there.