Gilbert Maxwell’s book Navajo Rugs, Past, Present and Future, which was published in 1963, was my first introduction to reading about Navajo weaving. I was 20 years old and had grown up around weaving, so I had a basic understanding of the art form.

But I really didn’t have a clue about its history.

This weaving was owned by the Hubbell Trading Company’s wholesale house in Winslow, Arizona. J.L. Hubbell Jr. owned this company and operated between 1924 and 1953.

Last year we had the opportunity to accept a group of Navajo weavings from a family in Oregon. They had been passed down from a grandfather who had driven a truck in the 1920s on the Navajo Reservation delivering goods to trading posts. The design on one of the pieces was particularly interesting.

One of the most popular regional styles of Navajo weaving has always been the Yei and Yeibichai. These weavings emerged from the Shiprock, New Mexico area after the turn of the 1900s when weavers began putting the figures of Deities from the traditional sand painting ceremonies in their rugs.

If you have followed our newsletters for very long, you have read my belief that I never saw a Navajo rug I didn’t like.  Well, it really is true.

“It’s the process of creating that is most important.”  This was an idea that I learned from Dr. Ann Hedlund, one of the most recognized experts on Navajo weaving.

We have been privileged to know and work with Ella for over 50 years. She was a dear friend and an artist whose work inspired many. Her quick smile and wonderful laugh immediately brought sunshine to wherever she was.

I don’t know if you have ever had something that just won’t leave your thoughts, but for me this week it has been all about Storm Patterns.

Red Mesa Trading Post is located about 20 miles west of Teec Nos Pos, Arizona on US 160. Today it is primarily a gas station and convenience store, but there was a day when some very nice and unusual Navajo rugs were woven and sold through this post.

Esther Etcitty was born in 1944 in a traditional Navajo Hogan near Sanostee, New Mexico, about thirty miles southwest of Shiprock. The major trading posts for Navajo weaving in that area are Two Grey Hills and Toadlena.

Until 1983, we had not considered carrying work by non-Indian artists, but there was a woman in town whose work everyone in the family liked and we wanted her to be part of the gallery.

Navajo pictorial weaving has been around since the early 1900s. The original pieces were simple. Scenes of railroad trains were a popular early pattern in the rugs. Some weavers still create this type of pictorial.