One of the Navajo Nation’s finest and most beloved weavers passed this last Saturday evening at the age of 93.
Ella Rose Perry has long been recognized as the finest and most innovative weaver of contemporary Crystal weavings.
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.
Ella Rose grew up in a traditional Navajo home and experienced much during her life. She remembers riding in a buckboard with her father to visit the trading post. She spent her summers living in the Chuska Mountains tending sheep and thought of those times as some of her favorites.
She worked as a teaching assistant at the Crystal School, but at her core, she was an artist with wool.
She wove only with hand spun wool from her sheep and used vegetal dyes that she made herself. Ella was always on the search for new dye material. One time, on her way to do a show with us at the Utah Museum of Natural History, she filled the entire trunk of her car with plants and leaves she spotted along the trip.
Later that night, at a Japanese restaurant in Salt Lake, she used her charms to get the owner to give her a trash bag full of branches with red leaves from what I suspect was a very expensive tree!
The unique patterns that filled the bands of her Crystal weavings, along with the technical quality of her work, were what made her rugs special.
Once she was doing a weaving demonstration for us. The rug she was working on was only about four inches up from the bottom of the loom. She had created four alternating sets of horizontal lines in two different colors. It was time to start the pattern.
Dad asked her how she decided what type of pattern to weave. She said, “I have to talk to my grandmother about it.”
“I didn’t think your grandmother was still alive,” he said.
“She isn’t,” Ella replied, “but when I get ready to start the pattern on my rug, I dream of her and she tells me what I should do.”
The next morning, she started her pattern.
I met Ella when I was still in high school at my Dad’s rug room in the Pepsi building. She called me “Sonny Boy,” and that’s who I was the rest of her life.
Of course, she will be remembered for her award-winning rugs and the weavings that exist in many museum and private collections. But to those that knew her, the memories of her smile and laughter, her love for her family and friends, her love of the sheep and weaving and her openness in meeting and enjoying people from all walks of life will be treasured.
When I think of Ella Rose Perry, I think of a woman who always kept a positive attitude and who was so humble about the masterpieces that she created. If you were having a tough day, all you needed was a phone call with “Gramma Perry” to perk you up.
When Ella called to tell us she was bringing a rug up, Antonia, my Mom and I would always make it a point to be in the gallery. In the spring, it wasn’t unusual for her to bring a newborn lamb that had been rejected by its mom. Her daughter, Marlene drove, and Ella bottle fed the lamb.
Everyone in the gallery took turns walking the lamb around the parking lot.
About 5 years ago, the wind caught the screen door on her back porch, knocking her to the ground and breaking her hip. She ended up in an assisted living center in Flagstaff called “The Peaks.” She had some other physical problems and began to show some deterioration in her mental skills, but never lost her joy for life.
The nurses and employees all knew her and loved her. She would travel the halls in her wheelchair, cheering up patients with stories and getting to know theirs. When you walked down the hall with her, everyone wanted to talk to her. She really was happy there and could not have lived at home.
She loved to weave and never let the desire go. The last time I saw her was in February before the facility shut down because of the virus. We had a great visit and then she told me she was going home the next day because the sheep needed her, and she had a rug on the loom.
She told me it was going to be special and Marlene would bring her to Durango when it was finished. Then she smiled and told me I needed to get home and to tell my mom and Antonia that she would be coming to see us in a couple of weeks.
I really wish that had been true. Gonna miss her!
