Archive for September 2008
The Navajos and The Amazing Cochineal Beetle, Part I
Jennie Slick and I are in Albuquerque on our way to do a three day workshop in Massachusetts. Just before I left Phoenix, I washed and rinsed some custom yarns for the students to look at. One group of them was dyed with cochineal. There’s a picture of the grouping below. Isn’t it amazing that…
Read MoreDesigning on the Edge: Exploring the Design Limits of Navajo Weaving
I really enjoy seeing weaving that pushes out the boundaries of design and helps to extend the audience of Navajo weaving. One of the weavers who does this consistently is Mae Clark of the New Lands area near Sanders, AZ. Mae’s work is seen exclusively at R.B. Burnham and Comany and I have the privilege…
Read MoreOn the Subject of Spirit Lines
I’ve got a meeting to get to tonight, so I’ll just do a brief follow up to the end of yesterday’s post on the Spiderwoman hole and its relationship to the spirit line. There’s a school of thought that runs along the line that most aspects of Navajo weaving, including the use of a spirit…
Read MoreEarly Development of the Storm Pattern Rug
Building on yesterday’s post on the Storm Pattern variant, the earliest illustration that shows what today we would call a Storm Pattern rug comes from J.B. Moore’s 1911 catalog. The rug is plate XXIII and a reproduction of the color plate appears below. The illustration shows a Storm Pattern that is little different in design…
Read MoreListen to a story…
Everyone says that you shouldn’t send people straight to other websites, but I think that you’ll really enjoy listening to Bruce Burnham tell you a short (1 minute and 13 seconds) story about the development of the Storm Pattern rug. I do the Burnham’s web site and this discussion got started when Bruce said the…
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