Shopping - Weaving

From the moment you first see a third phase Navajo chief blanket, woven wider than long with its intricate pattern of stripes and diamonds, or a traditionally striped Rio Grande blanket woven longer than wide, the innate skills of northern New Mexico weavers become instantly apparent.

Whether produced on upright looms used by Pueblo and Navajo weavers or European treadle looms brought by Spanish colonists from Mexico in the early 1600s, the region’s textiles have long cast a spell on collectors and admirers of the craft.

The Navajo give a mystical explanation for the power that mysteriously emerges from the warp and weft of their cotton and wool yarns. They believe Spider Woman taught them the art, with teaching tools that included lightning, sunlight, white shell and rock crystal.

However, scholars theorize the Navajo learned to weave from the Pueblo people around 1650. Evidence indicates the Pueblo people were the region’s first weavers 2,000 years ago. They made baskets, robes, sandals, plaited and twined mats from fibers such as yucca and bast fiber woven and decorated with feathers and rabbit fur. Around A.D. 700, the Pueblos began loom weaving with indigenous cotton, often using a backstrap loom, belted around the waist. With these materials Hopi and Pueblo weavers advanced the art, producing pieces of higher quality, woven more tightly and with more detailed designs. The Navajo elevated the art with the fineness of their spinning and weaving.

Weaving evolved yet again when the Spanish settlers arrived, bringing churro sheep whose wool was transformed on the European treadle loom into serapes, blankets and rugs. The Rio Grande blanket was one of the most widely recognized textiles to emerge from this tradition. This weft-faced, striped blanket was usually woven as two separate panels sewn together, creating the telltale center seam.

In numerous villages that sprang up along the Rio Grande, Hispanic weavers launched a cottage industry, inspired by the high quality of weaving then taking place in Mexico. Brothers Ignacio and Juan Bazán, master weavers and dyers, were dispatched from Mexico in 1807 with looms and weaving tools to establish an obraje (weaving production facility) in Santa Fe. Their mission was to enhance the quality of weaving in New Mexico.

When the first trains rolled into New Mexico in 1880, the railroad brought with it shipments of inexpensive, mill-manufactured blankets, which practically wiped out the Rio Grande weavers’ cottage industry. Around the turn of the last century, however, the industry revived when Santa Fe traders hired Hispanic weavers in the Chimayó area to create designs imitating Navajo textiles, known as Chimayó blankets.

Although they are generally distinct in patterns, colors and weaving techniques, some of the Pueblo, Navajo and Rio Grande weaving styles overlap due to contact among the cultures. So, when you’re looking at that third phase Navajo chief blanket, be sure to notice its stepped diamond design. You may see the same motif in that traditional Rio Grande blanket.

This article was written with the expert assistance of textile restorer Josie Caruso; Kathy Whitaker, director of the School of American Research’s Indian Research Arts Center; and Robin Farwell Gavin, Museum of Spanish Colonial Art curator.

WEAVING WONDERS ON EXHIBIT

Santa Fe

• The School of American Research’s Indian Arts Research Center, 660 Garcia St., has about 1,000 Native American blankets and rugs. Tours by reservation only. (505) 954-7205.
• The Wheelwright Museum, 704 Camino Lejo, displays Navajo textiles until Oct. 29, 2006. The museum’s Case Trading Post, a replica of a Navajo reservation trading post, sells traditional and contemporary Navajo and Pueblo weavings. (505) 982-4636.
• The Museum of Indian Arts and Culture, 710 Camino Lejo, showcases Native American textiles. (505) 476-1250.
• The Museum of International Folk Art, 706 Camino Lejo, exhibits Rio Grande blankets and Navajo textiles. (505) 476-1204.
• The Museum of Spanish Colonial Art, 750 Camino Lejo, exhibits Rio Grande and Chimayó weavings and will host a show in 2008 that compares Navajo and Hispanic weaving styles. (505) 982-2226.
• Spanish Market, held during the last full weekend in July on the Santa Fe Plaza, and Winter Spanish Market, held during the first full weekend in December, feature traditional Rio Grande and Chimayó textiles.

Western New Mexico

• The Historic Toadlena Trading Post and Weaving Museum, 12 miles west of State Road 491 at the west end of N19 (56 miles north of Gallup), has a superb collection of traditional and contemporary Toadlena/Two Grey Hills textiles. (888) 446-1759.

Chimayó

At these weaving galleries in Chimayó, the heart of historic Spanish Colonial weaving, you can buy traditional and contemporary textiles and view weavers at work:
• Centinela Traditional Arts, 1 mile east of the intersection of State Road 76 and County Road 98. (505) 351-2180.
• Ortega’s Weaving Shop, corner of State Road 76 and County Road 98. (505) 351-4215.
• Trujillo’s Weaving Shop, about 1/4 mile west of the intersection of State Road 76 and County Road 98. (505) 351-4457.