Weaving in Beauty

There are about 20 new forks to the Mercantile for your shopping pleasure. I haven’t had time to update the Mercantile tools for quite awhile and some new forks have just come in from Al Snipes and Gary Tsinniginnie. The design of the store pages has been changed so that you can see each fork by itself.   Right now, there are over a dozen of Al Snipes coveted ergonomically shaped Gillan style combs in a variety of woods and weights.   There is one rare left handed version.  If you prefer the look and feel of a traditional tool, take a look at the finely finished designs by Gary Tsinniginnie and Al Snipes.   There are a few pictures of those below.   You can see all of the new forks here.  There are more forks and battens coming shortly. 

Traditional Weaving Forks by Gary Tsinniginnie (Navajo) Click on any picture for a closer view.

Weaving forks are very personal and some people believe that your fork and all of your tools should be made by a family member or someone that you know well.   For most of us, that’s not an option.  All I can say is that these tools have been made by people who are very nice and very skilled and have been handled by people who really, really like them.  Contact me if you need advice on selecting a fork. 

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

Hover your mouse over the picture for a closer look.

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

Laramie Blake with her Christmas Club Burntwater

Tempe, AZ    If you’re a regular reader, you may remember that 20 year old fourth generation weaver Laramie Blake  has been attending college in the Phoenix valley and has just completed her first semester.  Laramie has been weaving to finance her educational expenses and thought that she had the piece she’s holding in the picture above sold.  Well, it just didn’t work out, so she’s offering it here at $150.   Weaving in Beauty isn’t getting any part of the money and we’re absorbing the credit card fees for this item.   We’ll also make sure that Laramie gets the money the same day that the rug is purchased.   Update:  Laramie’s rug has been sold, but she is happy to take orders for small weavings.   Please contact me for details. 

Laramie’s weaving is 12″x14.5″ and would look great on a wall or a table.   The Burntwater design is one that’s often woven by Laramie’s family and consists of geometric patterns woven with yarns that were traditionally vegetally dyed.  Laramie’s little piece is woven with commercially dyed Brown Sheep yarns and she wove it in between her classes and homework along with several other small pieces.   As is traditional for a young weaver, Laramie’s mother Emily Malone still does her warps for her and sends them down to Laramie.  

You can see more pictures  on this page.   

Yá’át’ééh Késhmish!  (Merry Christmas)

Mary Walker

Tempe, AZ   Teec Nos Pos (T’iis Nasbas or Cottonwoods in a Circle) is in northeastern Arizona near the Four Corners Monument and many people drive through on their way to Monument Valley, Mesa Verde or Canyon de Chelly.  Teec Nos Pos is one of the 110 chapters that comprise the Navajo Nation, and the current chapter president is master weaver and Navajo-Churro shepherd Roy Kady.  The regional pattern that bears the area name goes back to 1905 when Hambleton Noel came into the area and convinced the residents that he would be just the person to serve the community in the role of trader.  Noel’s brothers had established the trading post at Two Grey Hills in 1897 and Hambleton looked to the rug designs that his brothers were marketing to provide the area weavers with a sense of what he wanted to buy from them.  At the time, Oriental rugs competed with Navajo textiles for the consumer’s dollar and so it was natural for traders to encourage the production of something familiar to the rug buying public.  It was just natural for the weavers to adapt that new geometry to their own culture.  A close look at a Teec Nos Pos rug will show you what I’m talking about.  

People will often comment that Teec rugs “look different” from other Navajo rugs without being able to put their finger on exactly why.  A Teec is different from other regional styles.  In fact, those closest relative to a modern Teec Nos Pos rug is a Two Grey Hills rug woven before 1940.  Teec weavings are known for their very complex multiple borders and their dense and dazzling single panel designs.  In most Teec weavings, no one design element has more visual weight that any of the others.  With a Teec, your eye is drawn into the central panel rather than into a central design element.  When you look closely at those design elements, you’ll begin to understand that this design is tied as closely to the Navajo culture as many Ye’i rugs. Weavers may have been told “Weave this”, but they took the rough geometry of the design and made it their own by using objects and motifs that reflected their world and their vision.   This is easiest to see in the feathers that are frequently part of the pattern.  More difficult to see are rainbows, arrows, bows and even Ye’i faces.  In fact, there is what many Teec weavers call a Ye’i face in the beautiful Eileen Littleben Teec that you see above.   Can’t see it?  I’ll help you out.  Do you see the two maroon triangular elements?  Good.  Now turn one of  them vertical and you may begin to see two stylized eyes and a mouth.  Can’t make it out?  Look at the detail below.  Let me know if you see it.  The trader might have wanted and gotten a Teec Nos Pos to sell, but he also got a design that had a lot of what the weaver wanted to weave.   

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker

This large and complex weaving by Mae Clark represents the progress of her weaving career.

Tempe, AZ  Sometimes I see a weaving that just stays with me.  The rug above, by Mae Clark of the New Lands area, near Sanders, Arizona has been an inspiration to me ever since I first saw it in 2005.  Mae is a true artist, carefully composing her work, always pushing her design skills and trusting that the work will find a market.  She does the kind of weaving that most people don’t think of as a Navajo rug and that is a risky proposition.  It doesn’t hurt that one of the most ardent admirers of her work is trader Bruce Burnham, to the extent that I’ve never known Mae to sell her work to anyone else.   She works with Germantown reproduction yarns, a brightly colored three-ply worsted and Burnham’s Trading Post Yarn, which is a tightly spun woolen process yarn that resembles Navajo hand-spun.  If she can’t get the color she wants from Burnham’s, Mae dyes it herself. 

Mae told Bruce that this rug is a window that represents all of the stages her weaving career, culminating with pictorial elements.   The bird and butterfly panel is at the top of the vignettes into the other weaving patterns that brought Mae to this point in her life.  There are about 60 birds and butterflies on this rug and they are in every stage of flight and repose that you can imagine.  The more you look at them, the more you’ll see.  I’ve tried to pull out some of the most interesting areas, but the five megapixel camera that I was using limits the enlargements that I can pull out of the pictures.  I was kind of afraid that Bruce would start charging me $1 a picture!    I hope you’ll enjoy getting better acquainted with Mae and her bevy of birds and butterflies. Although Mae usually does several versions of a design, to my knowledge this is the only one of its kind.  She’s done rugs with other birds and even people, but she hasn’t woven another life story.  So far.  

Hagoshíí (so long for now)

Mary Walker