Weaving in Beauty

Jennie Slick demonstrates weaving in the classroom at Window Rock.

Window Rock, AZ After a quiet morning of weaving with instructor Jennie Slick (pictured above), we spent the afternoon at R.B. Burnham and Company Trading Post in Sanders, AZ.  Burnham’s has wool that is custom-spun for Navajo weaving and all of our classes really enjoy browsing through the vegetally dyed colors that hang from ceiling to floor in their wool room.    Although many Navajo weavers use Brown Sheep yarn for weaving, trader Bruce Burnham believes that it is too soft for Navajo rugs, especially in sizes for the floor.  The yarn that he has custom spun has a high twist which allows better definition in the resulting design.   Once I tried Burnham’s yarn, but only other thing that even came close was my own churro handspun and Jennie Slick and I use their yarns for all of our classes.  (Full disclosure: I also do the Burnham’s web site.)

Trader Bruce Burnham discusses weaving. Two Germantown Revival weavings by Mae Clark are in the background. Bruce wove the rug that he's holding.

We had a memorable visit with Bruce and he discussed the role of the trader in the development of Navajo textiles as floorcoverings.  Right now he has some J.B. Moore catalog rugs in the gallery and I’ve included a picture of a remarkable pictorial Storm Pattern variant attributed to Moore’s influence below.  J.B. Moore traded from the Crystal Trading Post, about 30 miles north of Window Rock, from the 1890’s until about 1913.  Using the same tools as his business contemporaries J.C. Penney and Sears Roebuck, Moore marketed Navajo textiles through his catalogs.   It is always frustrating to me that the identity of the weavers of these pieces is lost to history, but Mark Winter has had remarkable success in identifing weavers of Two Grey Hills textiles.  Perhaps a similar effort in the Crystal area would help to yeild the identities of the people who created such beautiful and enduring woven treasures.

A J.B. Moore Storm Pattern variant.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Vegetally dyed yarns in summer colors and wonderful rugs at R.B. Burnham and Co. Trading in Sanders, AZ. Please click for a larger view.

Sanders, AZ I put together the photo collage above as part of an update that I was doing for the  R.B. Burnham & Co. web site and I thought you might enjoy seeing some of the rugs that they have in their gallery as well as the summer crop of vegetally dyed yarns by Marie Begay.  Marie guards her dye recipes as a trade secret and frequently mixes colors from different plants together to achieve the hues that she is after.    She also overdyes gray and heather naturals to get some of her deeper shades and some of the colors soak for days before Marie is happy with the results.  The yarns are custom spun for Navajo weaving and I find that I get better design definition from them than from other types of commercial yarn.   The yarns sell for $9 per 4 oz. skein and come in a worsted (#1) weight and a sport (#2) weight.   Burnham’s also has natural and aniline colors of the same yarns at $5.50 per skein.

The rugs in the center of the collage are by Spider Rock Girls Rose Yazzie (right, Burntwater), Emily Malone (center, Burntwater Teec Nos Pos) and Lavera Blake (left, Burntwater).   You can see more of their weaving at their web site.   The other pictures in the collage show scenes from the trading post and you can see rugs by Mae Clark and Maybelle Begay at the upper right center.

Burnham’s is located just south of I-40 at the U.S. 191 South exit and has an online store for wool purchases, although it’s probably better to call them (928-688-2777) for specific colors of vegetal yarn.  You can see why I stop by so often to update their pictures!

Hag0shíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

A view of one of the rugs on display at Toadlena's centennial exhibit

Toadlena, NM The Toadlena Trading Post is celebrating 100 years in business with a new exhibit that documents the weaving genealogy of the Bear Clan.  Trading post owner Mark Winter has gathered rugs representing Bear Clan weavers who are in the living memory of the present generation.   Each matriarch and her descendants are documented in detail and many of the rugs are  hung over murals showing the red rocks and turquoise blue skies of the Southwest.  Among the prominent weavers who are descendants of Bear Clan matriarch Sagebrush Hill Woman are Daisy Taugelchee and Julia Jumbo and the exhibit includes panels of both their work.  You can see a composite picture of the panel showing the weaving of Daisy and her close relatives below and you can read the description of the weavings displayed by clicking on the picture at the bottom of the article.

A composite photo of the Toadlena panel depicting the work of Daisy Tauglechee and her close relatives.

The Toadlena Centennial celebration will last until June 20, 2010, so you’ve got time to plan a trip to the trading post to soak of the history of the place to take in the Shash Tso exhibit.  Plan to spend at least two hours and if you can, try to meet trader Mark Winter during your visit.  You’ll never forget your day at Toadlena.

Please click on the picture for a full sized summary of Daisy Taugelchee's panel.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Karen Mittleider (left), Linda Fasel and Barbara Nicodemus working on their projects in Window Rock

Window Rock, Arizona We continued weaving today, and tonight several students were approaching the halfway point in their work.  The picture above shows three of the students earlier in the day.  We made a switch in our itinerary due to the winds in the area today.  We’ll be doing natural dyes with Rose Dedman in Ft. Defiance tomorrow morning.  Unlike the last two years, temperatures are running above normal and the afternoon conditions are too windy for safe dyeing over an open fire.

This afternoon, several of the students went into Gallup with me for a tour of trading posts.  We started with lunch at Earl’s Restaurant.  The food was very good and we had the chance to purchase jewelry from Native American vendors as we were eating.  After lunch, our first stop was Richardson’s Trading which is home to the largest rug room in the world.  It’s a good place to talk about design and also to see historic rugs.  The early Ye’i Bi Chei below was one of several historic pieces that we  examined.

A 1930's Ye'i Bi Chei weaving, probably from the Lukachukai area

Going on from Richardson’s, we visited City Electric Shoes to check out the moccasins and western wear.  Leaving the downtown area,  we visited with Bill Malone at Shush Yaz Trading.  Bill told his history in the trading business and shared several unique rugs with us, including the special piece below by weaver Jenny Thomas.  Jenny has combined Wide Ruins and Teec Nos Pos elements for a striking composition.

Bill Malone shows Jenny Thomas' unique Wide Ruins/Teec Nos Pos composite rug

Our final trading post stop was at Perry Null’s Tobe Turpen Trading Post where we discussed the origns of the Gallup throw and examined the Wide Ruins weavings of the Clyde and Francis families.  Perry Null’s has recently acquired several fine weavings, and I’ve included a picture of a strikingly beautiful Burntwater by master weaver Lillian Joe.

Liliian Joe's Burntwater rug shines with vegetally dyed yarns at Perry Null's. Note that Liilian's rug is the green weaving. The picture was taken with it over another rug.

It’s close to midnight here and I need to be up early to get ready for some of our own vegetal dyeing, so I’ll write more tomorrow.

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Shirley Brown with her handspun and handcarded Two Grey Hills masterpiece. If you want to talk about intrinsic value, this is a good example.

Several people have asked me how Navajo weavers are doing in this economic downturn. That’s not an easy question to answer because Navajo weaving is sold in several ways, each affected differently by economic conditions.

Most Navajo weaving is sold as Native American craft work.  Although this market has slowed, it has drawn strength from the perception that the items sold have an inherent value that cannot be erased like, say, the value of a share of Lehman Brothers stock.  While Navajo weavings may not appreciate as quickly or as steeply as some other types of investments do, with care they most certainly retain a lasting value.  Most traders amass a collection of work, kind of a trader 401k, that helps to fund their retirement.  Trader Hank Blair’s mother, complimented by an appraiser on the depth and variety of her collection remarked “Well, if something didn’t sell in two or three years, I just took it in the house….”.

Some Navajo weaving, of course, is sold as fine art by weavers like D.Y. Begay, Barbara Jean Teller Ornelas and Morris Muskett, artists who are represented by galleries and whose work is shown in museums.  This market seems to have been somewhat affected by financial trauma, but once again is buoyed by the intrinsic value of the work.   There is always, it seems, a market for the best of the best.

Under any economic conditions, one of the major issues for Navajo weavers is getting the best price for their work as quickly as possible.  The opportunity for a weaver to sell a rug to a local trading post has been declining for decades as the number of on reservation trading posts has dwindled.  I talked with traders Bruce Burnham and Hank Blair about this recently and they said that they could only think of seven trading posts still buying weaving that were actually on the reservation.  There is still a very active trading economy in towns like Flagstaff, Arizona and Gallup, New Mexico, places that are referred to as “border towns”, but the concentration of a few large buyers and the large number of weavers drives down prices in these areas.   Weavers also travel as far as Durango, Albuquerque, Phoenix and Tucson to sell their work.  The growth in the number of Navajo rug auctions over the last few years has helped to give weavers a new outlet for their work, and it’s one that so far has weathered the current economic seas.  R.B. Burnham and Company has built their auction business up to some 15 auctions per year, returning over $800,000 to the consigning weavers so far in 2008.   The Crownpoint Rug Auction also offers a dependable monthly auction, usually offering over 200 rugs, returning 80% of the purchase price to the weaver.

Navajo weavers wove through the Long Walk and the Great Depression.  Ninety-year-old Anna Ashley remembers selling her weaving by the side of Route 66 when there was no other market for the work.  She raised her family with the money that she made from weaving, just as Emily Malone is raising hers today.  As the late weaver Stella Cly would say “Now with the comb, you are not only batting a design together, you are also chasing away the evil spirits of poverty”.

This handspun and handcarded rug by Clara Sands was sold at a Friends of Hubbell Native Arts Auction.

Devona Salake sells a weaving at auction. Weaving Worlds documents the complexities of Navajo weaving in the modern world.

I’m seeing a lot of traffic from people who seem to be looking for information on broadcast schedules for Bennie Klain’s Weaving Worlds documentary on PBS.  The best source of information I’ve found is at the PBS site.  At this site, you can select the program and see when it will be broadcast on a PBS station near you.  You can also contact your local PBS outlet to see when they may be showing the program in your area.

Mary Walker