Mae was born around 95 years ago. Even she does not know for sure how old she is because no one recorded the date when she was born.

We do know that she has been at it a long time!

Many of you saw our Facebook posts, on May 23rd, about the two large Ganado Red weavings that were created by famed weaver, Mae Jim, in the 1980’s.

We took these two amazing weavings down to Ganado High School, where one of Mae Jim's nephews was graduating, and they were used as the backdrop for the graduation exercises.

On Saturday, June 18, Toh-Atin Gallery will be traveling to Utah for our Annual Silent Auction and Sale of over 150 Navajo weavings. It will be a fun and interesting day at one of the most beautiful museums in the country.

Navajo weaver and Medicine Man Anthony Tallboy came to the gallery yesterday with a beautiful Storm pattern. We had been expecting him. He called on Friday to say he would have the weaving done by Monday. After he called, I started thinking about how long I’d known Anthony.

We recently picked up a collection of weavings from the 1980s that were done by some very talented women. Most of them had tags on them so it was easy to identify the weavers. They came from a famous Indian Trading family in Gallup (by agreement I can share that name with the purchaser of the weavings but am not allowed to put it in print).

One of my favorite events is when someone walks in the gallery and says something like, “Do you have any real Navajo rugs?”

Toh-Atin Gallery will be in Santa Fe, for Indian Market showing the largest selection of Navajo weaving in town! It’s the biggest week in American Indian art as thousands of artists, dealers, collectors, museum directors, art lovers and more than a few crazy people, descend on this Northern New Mexico town!

The Harvey family lives north of Window Rock, Arizona, the Navajo Nation Capital. I don’t know when my Dad met them, but I don’t think I remember a time when he wasn’t buying weavings from Esther Harvey, the mother and head of the family.

We have received a lot of credit for being the traders who developed the Burnham area Navajo weaving designs. That, of course, is not true. The weavers from the Burnham area, specifically the Begay and Barber families, did not need anyone to help them create these wonderful pieces.

Ruth Teller was one of the finest Two Grey Hills weavers. She lived in a small place not to far from Newcomb on what used to be Highway 666. My dad used to stop and see her and I went with him a couple of times.

She had three daughters that also were amazing weavers. Two of them, Roseann Lee and Barbara Ornelas worked together to create a large Two Grey Hills tapestry that won the Best of Show at the Santa Fe Indian Market in 1987. It was the first Navajo weaving to win the award and it set a record price for contemporary Navajo weaving when it was sold.

If you have been following our newsletter a while, you know the story of the Burnham weavers. In a chapter house area south of Shiprock and across the road from Two Grey Hills, a group of five sisters, Anna Mae, Marie, Helen, Alice and Sandy, began creating unique Navajo weavings in the 1970s.

Towards the end of the1800s, the Navajo had begun to adopt the clothing worn by the traders and settlers in the Southwest. The Navajo women moved from wearing the woven dresses and blankets that came from their looms and adopted the long velvet skirts and blouses that they were first exposed to by U.S. Army officer's wives while the Navajo were kept in captivity during the Civil War.