Teec Nos Pos

WE-58 Above, by Mrs. Saltwater about 1940, from Russell Foutz Indian Room. RAY MANLEY WE-59 Right, by Esther Williams, 1970. From the Read Mullan Collection. ARIZONA PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATES WE-60 Below, by Emma Yabeney won First Prize in the Arizona State Fair and First Prize in the Heard Museum competition in 1962. From the Read Mullan Collection. ARIZONA PHOTOGRAPHIC ASSOCIATES

NAVAJO WEAVING from page 23

made, but it was the Classic sarape or blanket that marked the highest achievement of Navajo weaving. Some of these were ponchos, blankets with a slit in the center through which the head passed, the blanket draping gracefully in front and behind. Some cost as much as a hundred dollars in 1830; today, those that have survived are worth many times that amount.

These bold, geometric, Classic blankets and ponchos were decorated with terraced zigzag stripes and figures, woven in a few patrician colors and elaborated in infinite variety. However complex these designs appear, they are composed of units that go from edge to edge, without borders. Large terraced triangles were sometimes woven in the corners and across the ends, with full diamonds sometimes at the center. These superb fabrics of the middle 1800s mark a pinnacle in Navajo weaving which was not approached again for nearly a hundred years.

Bosque Redondo brought to a sharp, sudden close the Classic Period. For two centuries there had been intermittent warfare between the Navajo and their neighbors. In 1863, troops under Kit Carson laid waste to the Navajo ranges, burning their homes and fields, slaughtering their sheep and other livestock. The proud and rich Navajo became the impoverished wards of the U.S. Government, interned at Bosque Redondo far out on the barren plains of eastern New Mexico.

Bosque Redondo was a major turning point in Navajo weaving. The Navajo, aliens in an enemy land, faced strange new ways of doing things. They had few sheep from which to provide themselves with clothing and blankets. It was here that the Navajo genius for absorbing new ideas and reinterpreting them in Navajo fashion came to the fore. The commercialism which had always been a part of Navajo weaving now helped them find new outlets and new directions for their weaving. From then on, they wove less for themselves and more for other people.

Synthetic dyes were produced in England in 1856. In 1863, the Americans started their first aniline dye factory. Before long, American cloths and yarns dyed in the new colors, and perhaps the dyes themselves, came to the trading post at Bosque Redondo. The Navajo had few sheep, but they could ravel the new cloth and combine it with the new, commercial yarns and a little of their own sheeps' wool. The officers and men at the post would buy the things they wove as souvenirs of their western experiences. Thus, many products of the Navajo looms, woven of mixed yarns, marked the Bosque Redondo years and carried over through most of the 1870s.

Elements of the Classic design style lingered on for a while, but these late Classic blankets were no longer bold and creative. The terraced figures became smaller, repetitious, fussy, arranged in panels separated by broad stripes of white or other plain colors. The weaving became coarser. As the Classic design style was dying out, another style was emerging - the serrate diamond style, which they borrowed from the SpanishAmerican weavers along the Rio Grande, who had, themselves, borrowed it from the "Saltillo" weavers of northern Mexico.

"Saltillo" style blankets featured a large central motif composed of concentric serrate diamonds in different colors on a background of vertically oriented stripes, and were surrounded by a figured border. In their weaving, the Navajo had always made color changes in design by little steps or terraces, but these new blankets changed color along a diagonal line. In Navajo weaving there is often found what is called a lazy line. Instead of carrying the weft completely across the fabric, the Navajo woman would weave only as far as she could comfortably reach, and dropping back one warp at a time in passing the weft, created a diagonal line exactly likeText continued page 42

RIO GRANDE CLASSIC SOURCE BOOK

Rare color reproductions from the publisher's preface of the HOLLISTER CLASSIC: Recently we went to Denver, and we never go to that city without visiting our great and good friend Fred Rosenstock. We chatted quite awhile about the vagaries of the book business and the art business Fred's book store on Colfax Avenue is more like an art gallery, these days, than a book store finally getting around to books worth reprinting.

Fred bounced up out of his chair, hurriedly ventured into his mysterious "collection" room upstairs and came back in a few moments triumphantly waving a practically mint first edition of this book. The author, Fred explained (as only he can), lived in Denver when he wrote and privately published this beautiful title (1903). We couldn't afford to pay Fred's price ($150.00) for the rare item, but since in our reprinting we do no harm to a first edition, he was quite willing to lend it to us. We were eager to borrow, so here, now, you hold in your hands another beautiful Rio Grande Classic.

While this book was first published in 1903, it was apparently "in preparation" for several years before that perhaps as early as 1890. Author Uriah S. Hollister, according to his obituary, was a man of considerable social, economic and political stature; he was totally a man of his milieu.

We called on our friend Alys Freeze, head of the Western History Collection of the Denver Public Library, for information about Uriah Hollister. Presently she sent us a stat of a microfilm obituary that appeared in The Rocky Mountain News on September 9, 1929. We copy excerpts herewith: "Funeral services for Uriah S. Hollister, former prominent Denver oil man and G.A.R. veteran, will be held in Hollywood, Calif., this week.

"Mr. Hollister died at Hollywood Monday, within less than a month of his 91st birthday.

"Mr. Hollister had a hobby of collecting unusual articles of American Indian and Chinese craftsmanship. His collection was regarded as one of the finest in the country. He also was author of a book on Navajo rugs, which was considered an outstanding text on the subject. As plates for this book were destroyed by fire, copies of it are very rare, relatives said.... and rare indeed are the excellent full page color plates reproduced in the Hollister book.Order from your book dealer, or from 176 pages . . . 81/2 x 11 inches . . . Hard cover $12.00