Weaving in Beauty

Tempe, AZ  I couldn’t take you to the River Trading Post, so I thought that I should share the other pictures that I took there when I visited on Tuesday.   The Ye’i Bi Chei rug that I showed yesterday is a showstopper, but the other rugs in the collection are each remarkable in their own ways.  There are some great technique studies here for weavers.  In the first two pictures in the gallery, look at the way the weaver handles the kernels in the ear of corn.  The second picture is a close up study of it with a nice view of most of the chipmunk for your viewing pleasure.  Weavers should also note the Red Mesa Outline rug, which has very well executed outlined squash blossom motifs.

The owner of the collection, Larry Meyers, really appreciates bird pictorials and you can see that in his selections.  He also has great taste in wearing blankets and there are two stunning  examples for you to see, both from the late 19th century.

A remarkable Whirling Log Sandpainting rug is not shown below.  Although the whirling log motif used by Native Americans has nothing to do with the swastika, it looks like one and it’s offensive to many people.  There are also traditional Navajo people who do not believe that it is appropriate to display sandpaintings in any way other than in a traditional Navajo ceremony.  I have decided that rugs with this symbol won’t be on the front page of the site to avoid having people surprised by seeing something that they weren’t expecting so you’ll have to access another page of the site if you’d like to see the weaving.  If you study it, you’ll begin to appreciate the meaning that the whirling log has for Navajo people and you’ll see why weavers want to reclaim it.  The sandpainting is typically used in the sixth day of the Nightway ceremony and depicts an epic journey undertaken by a Navajo with assistance from the Holy People.  Click here to see the weaving.  

To see any picture from the gallery below in high resolution with a caption, just click on the thumbnail.  You may also view the gallery as a slide show by clicking that option in the brackets below.  

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Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

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Tempe, AZ  One day about 100 years ago, a Navajo weaver near Shiprock, New Mexico spent the better part of a year weaving the rug that you see above.  It’s woven with Navajo Churro yarn and the quality of the weaving and the design symmetry tell us that the weaver must have been a highly regarded and skilled artist who whose work in every respect meets the requirement that fine art be an object that is created as an expression of aesthetic excellence.  In Navajo culture, this is called hózhó, the beauty and harmony that surround the well-lived and balanced life.   It is an ethic that drove the weaver to eschew any effort to call attention to herself.  These weavings are not signed and except for a very few individuals, we don’t know who they were.  Their work was used in homes all over the world and an amazing amount of it still survives, although it isn’t often in the great condition that the rug shown above is in.   Today, it is recognized as the fine art that it is and this week it’s being celebrated at the River Trading Post in Scottsdale.  Collectors Larry and Deborah Meyers will have their textiles at the River until Friday, March 2, so this is an opportunity that won’t be around long.    

You can also see wonderful examples of textile art at the Old Territorial Shop just down the street and the Arts Walk tomorrow will start a weekend celebrating Native American fine arts that includes the Heard Museum Indian Market.  I’m going to one busy little rug geek for the next few days.  Hey, sleep is a crutch.  

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Tempe, AZ  One of my Facebook friends posted what you might call a “message picture”  yesterday and it said “Life is about using the whole box of crayons”.  I immediately thought of Bessie Littleben’s weaving.  Bessie’s using the all the crayons in a lot more ways than one, which of course is the point of the quotation.  There are, according to Bessie, 64 colors in the weaving above.  There are always more than 50 colors in her work.  OK, I’ve never counted them, but I sure wouldn’t argue with her on the numbers because I think I’d lose.  

Bessie’s getting a lot more out of that box than colors, though.  The designs have perfect symmetry and although they are all recognizably Bessie’s style, they are all different in intricate and amazing ways.  They vary in the way that the borders are put together, the way that the central panels are composed and in the play of the colors themselves.  Stylistically, artistically and skillfully woven, they have that special sense of graceful satisfaction that comes from using all the crayons in the box.   I really like people who are using the whole box of crayons.  

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

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Tempe, AZ   It is always fascinating to see the rugs that people have tucked away.  Most of the time, these textiles have been well loved to the point where some of them are in tatters, but every once in a while something emerges that gives you a window to another day, this one over 100 years ago.  The rug in the picture above had been stored away since shortly after it was woven.  Why would someone do that?  Who knows?  Sometimes, things like this come from families who have been in the trading business.   Over the course of a trading career, they’ll amass that I like to call a Trader 401k that usually consists of many of the higher quality items that they’ve acquired, although that isn’t always the strategy.  ”If it was in the store for two or three years and it didn’t sell, I just took it in the house”, said one trader who had built up a wonderfully eclectic treasure trove from the things that her customers didn’t want.  For whatever reason, the rug above was stored away for somewhere around 100 years and it provides us with a glimpse at Navajo weaving right at the beginning of the rug weaving period.  

Always looking for ways to market the goods that the Navajo people traded to them, entrepreneurs like J.B. Moore, C.N. Cotton and J.L Hubbell looked at style trends and passed those along to the artists and craftspeople that they worked with.   For instance, during the 1890′s, it was quite fashionable for upper class Victorian homes to have an “Indian Room”.  Now, what could be better than a Navajo rug to cover the floor in your Indian Room?  Navajos didn’t weave rugs at the time, but the weavers astutely caught on to what the traders wanted and started to adapt their blanket patterns to a more tightly packed weave done with thicker yarns that would stand the wear of foot traffic.  

This rug is very much part of this inflection point in Navajo weaving.  In terms of pattern, it could be a Germantown wearing blanket from the 1870′s or 1880′s, but the yarns are thick and tightly hand spun from local sheep and the dyes used for the central double diamonds are vegetal sage and wild carrot.   As the Navajo rug gained popularity, the designs would evolve into complex bordered geometries, but at this point the weavers were using the patterns that they knew to create a product that they would only see used in the homes of others.  As weavers turned to the production of rugs, commercially woven blankets that echoed the old Transitional patterns were introduced and blanket weaving ended.  Today, there are a few weavers who are once again picking up the idea of weaving items for personal use and apparel and a rug dress has become one of the most desired items for graduations.   Maybe we’re on the edge of another trend!

If you are in the Phoenix area and would like to see more historic textiles, stop by the River Trading Post in Scottsdale between now and February 29th to see their Antique Weaving Show.  Click here for more details.  I’ll be stopping by there and I’ll post some pictures for you.  

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Hagoshíí (so long for now

Mary Walker

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Tempe, AZ   The art of pictorial weaving lends itself to this time of year and Louise Bia is one of the top practitioners when it comes to Christmas pictorials.  Everything here is beautifully proportioned, and the twin Santa figures have their own personalities that reflect Louise’s weaving skill.  This rug was woven at a 90 degree angle to the display, meaning that everything was woven sideways.  Louise does one or two of these per year.  Although these are Christmas figures, I hope that they will brighten whatever you are celebrating.   

Have a happy and meaningful holiday season!  

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker