Navajo weaving

Navajo rugs and blankets are textiles produced by Navajo people (Template:Lang-nv) of the Four Corners area of the United States. They are a flat tapestry-woven textile produced in a fashion similar to Kilims of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Navajo men traditionally build the looms, but women traditionally do the weaving.

History

It is thought that the Navajo learned to weave from their Pueblo Indian neighbors when they moved into the Four Corners area during the period from 1300 to 1500. By the 1600s the Navajo had become skilled weavers. The introduction of wool came with coming of Spanish.^[1] The first Spaniards to visit the region wrote about seeing Navajo blankets. By the 1700s the Navajo had begun to import yarn with their favorite color, Bayeta red. (see link below to Navajo weaving website) The Navajo people created some of the finest textiles in North America. Using an upright loom the Navajos made almost exclusively utilitarian blankets. Little patterning and few colors on almost all blankets, except for the much sought after Chief's Blanket, which evolved from the 1st Phase, few wide bands, to the 2nd phase, wide bands with squares on the corners to the 3rd Phase which made more and more use of patterns and colors. Around the same time the Navajo people, who had long started traded for commercial wool, often from the uniforms of soldiers, rewove these into intricate multicolored blankets called Germantown. Some early European settlers moved in and set up trading posts, often buying Navajo Rugs by the pound and selling them back east by the bale.

Traders encouraged the locals to weave blankets and rugs into distinct styles. They included "Two Gray Hills" (predominantly black and white, with traditional patterns), "Teec Nos Pos" (colorful, with very extensive patterns), "Ganado" (founded by Don Lorenzo Hubbell), red dominated patterns with black and white, "Crystal" (founded by J. B. Moore), oriental and Persian styles (almost always with natural dyes), "Wide Ruins," "Chinlee," banded geometric patterns, "Klagetoh," diamond type patterns, "Red Mesa" and bold diamond patterns. Many of these patterns exhibit a fourfold symmetry, which is thought by professor Gary Witherspoon to embody traditional ideas about harmony or Hozh.

Folklore

Navajo women believe the art of weaving was taught to them by Spider Woman, who then constructed a loom according to instructions given to them by the Holy People.^[2]