One of my favorite times to be in the gallery in Durango is when a weaver comes in with a rug wrapped in a Blue Bird Flour sack. Older weavers seldom open up the package. After we greet each other, they hand it to me, and I get the pleasure of unrolling it. It is just like opening an unexpected birthday present!
That experience has become increasingly rare as fewer older women are still weaving. Today, it is not unusual for me to receive a text message from a weaver with a picture of the weaving she, or her mother, has just finished, wanting to know if I am interested. Times have changed.
These days, some of those great moments of discovery come not from the weaver themselves but from someone who has a weaving that, for one reason or another, they want to move along to someone else. There are many reasons for that, but not everyone has the same taste or the room to display a weaving. We don’t take every weaving that is brought into the gallery for resale, but there are some that a person can’t help but fall in love with.
This rug, which is around 100 years old, is one of those pieces. It was woven by a woman who had an incredible sense of design and technical ability. Most Teec Nos Pos weavings of today are woven with commercial yarns. This weaving was made with hand-spun wool and intended for use on the floor. It was used for many years but has improved with time, unlike many weavings that were not well cared for.
My father used to tell people when looking at a rug made from home-spun wool, “If you walk on it for five or ten years, you will have a really beautiful rug!” And he was serious. A Navajo weaving walked on over a period of time loses the rough look of hand-spun wool (not that there is anything wrong with that look) and develops a smooth and elegant surface. The colors will fade gently, and the weaving will take on a new, perhaps gentler, personality.
This is one of those pieces. The background of the ever-changing natural grey yarn acts as a setting upon which the pattern above it seems to float. Only two aniline dyes were used to make this weaving: Red and, surprisingly, orange! The inside border, which looks light gold, was once a bright aniline-dyed orange! That color was primarily found at Red Mesa and Teec Nos Pos at the time.
Commercial dyes were used to color yarn, using packets of dye obtained from the trading posts that were put in cast iron pots with boiling water over an open fire. These dyes had mordants (materials that bind with the dye and fix them to the wool), but sometimes, they were not strong enough. Some weavers added their own natural mordants. Perhaps exposure to light changed the color, but the red is so beautiful, I doubt that.
It reminds me of when someone brought a pastel drawing to the gallery. The pastels had shifted over the years, and the drawing was not as sharp as it had been. “Could it be restored?” the owner wanted to know. Stanton Englehart, the head of the Fort Lewis College Art Department and, we believe, one of America’s greatest painters, was in the gallery, and when my sister showed it to him, he said, “Isn’t it wonderful how this drawing has aged!”
It’s the same thing with a weaving like this. You can not get the look of an old weaving in a contemporary piece. This rug has a beautifully executed one-of-a-kind design that has stood the tests of time and use. It is one of the pieces I put in the all-time favorites category!
