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May 2006 Volume 4, Issue 4

American Heritage
April/May 2005

Buying Smart

Navajo Textiles: The Woven Spirit

By Missy Sullivan

With its native, handspun wool in natural ivory and indigo-dyed blue, and its highly prized raveled red bayeta, this poncho serape (c. 1840) is as good as it gets. There are only some 30 known.

(Courtesy the Becker Collection of Southwest Textiles)

It was the quintessential Antiques Roadshow find. In 2002, a man named Ted from Tucson presented appraiser Don Ellis with a simple striped wool blanket,saying that it had been hanging over the side of a rocking chair in his bedroom for years, ever since he had inherited it from his aunt. His first clue that it might be something valuable? The Roadshow producers assigned burly security men to escort him around before his television taping. Sure enough, when the cameras rolled, Ellis informed Ted that he was in possession of a “national treasure.”

Turns out, the blanket his grandmother had put at the foot of his bed on cold nights when he was a boy earned the highest valuation ever conferred in the Roadshow’s ten year history. What was it, exactly, that Ted had? A first-phase Ute style Navajo chief’s blanket, woven between 1840 and 1860, one of the oldest, rarest and finest examples ever to hit the market—one of only 50 or so known. And how much did Ellis think it might fetch at auction? Somewhere between $350,000 and $500,000.

On camera, Ted from Tucson could be seen wiping away tears of joy.

He and his wife sold the blanket to bankroll their retirement house. The weaving ended up in a major American museum. And dealers I spoke with report that the Roadshow publicity helped peel a few more old blankets off of people’s rocking chairs and into the market.

Navajo blankets of the classic era (mid-to-late 19th century) have long been valued. As Nancy Blomberg, curator of native arts at the Denver Art Museum, points out, “They were widely traded with other tribes like the Ute, the Cheyenne and the Sioux, afforded and worn only by persons of wealth and stature.” Indeed, the term “chief’s blanket” comes not from Navajo—the nomadic, clan-based culture didn’t even have chiefs—but from the fact that high-ranking members of other tribes acquired the striking textiles as badges of their wealth and power.

By 1850, says long-time collector and dealer Jerry Becker, of Elk Creek Trading, the weavings traded for as much as $50 in gold or “many, many horses.”

But after the native people of the Great Plains and desert Southwest were stripped of their land wealth, forced into reservations and given “prairie” clothes to wear, textile patronage shifted to the non-native realm. As trains forged westward at the end of the 19th century, belching out a steady stream of tourists, trading posts sprouted up to serve them. Enterprising traders like Fred Harvey, Lorenzo Hubbell and J.B. Moore revived and regenerated Navajo weaving—not only by marketing it to white buyers, but by providing commercial yarns and aniline dyes from back east that allowed weavers to expand their palette and experiment with new designs. So-called wearing blankets were phased out in favor of decorative rugs, which are being produced to this day in regional styles that first emerged around specific trading posts in the late 1890s.

A classic Two Grey Hills rug, prized for its hand-spun, hand-carded wool, natural colors and extremely tight weave.

(Courtesy Garland’s Navajo Rugs)

These days, Navajo textiles range from a few hundred dollars for a small contemporary rug up to a half a million and more for the oldest, rarest chief’s blankets. Generally, you’ll pay less at auction, partly because the best stuff still trades privately. David Roche of Sotheby’s points out that you can get a good example rug from the trading post era (1900 to 1930s) for between $10,000 and $20,000, and a nice rug from the second half of the 20th century for only $5,000. Jim Haas of Butterfields says that the average price in his sales is only $1,500, up from $1,000 in recent years.

Why the dominance of blankets in the market? For one thing, they’re older and rarer. And because they weren’t made specifically for the tourist trade, many see them as more authentic reflections of Navajo culture, less tainted by contact with, and dependence on, the white man. Butterfields’ Haas explains, “Blankets tend to be seen as artifacts, while rugs are a more decorative market.”

Tony Berlant, a California artist, collector and consultant to Navajo textile collectors, takes that idea a step further. For him, while Navajo textiles were secular objects, with no specific ceremonial purpose, their abstract visual power and expressive use of color still carry spiritual reverberations. “For the Navajo, abstracted geometries made visible the powers of the universe and essence of their landscape. The blankets were not created to decorate a rectangle, but rather, when worn, to make the energy of the individual and nature perceivable as a unified whole.” In other words, they give us some visceral insight into the Navajo world view.

That may explain why they bring so much warmth and glowing energy to a room. It’s no surprise, he says, that they were avidly collected by abstract artists like Barnett Newman, Kenneth Noland and Donald Judd. Or that a collector who went to Sotheby’s to look at a luminous Rothko abstraction came home with a second-phase blanket instead (at a quarter-million dollars, a pittance compared to the multi-million-dollar canvas). Says Berlant, “You don’t have to be an art connoisseur to appreciate the abstract energy of a blanket. Whether we know it or not, I think we are drawn to them.”

What do connoisseurs look for in Navajo textiles? Ultimately, says Jerry Becker, “it’s the art. Your eye hits it first and it’s got to strike that emotion that only art can.” How successful is the design? How well do the colors interrelate? Navajo textiles are generally one-of-a-kind. While there are definite stylistic traditions, each textile usually has a variation of color or design that makes it unique. Then there’s the question of workmanship. Are the dyes consistent? How finely spun is the wool? How tightly is it woven? “The handle,” says Haas, “should be soft and supple, tight and thin.” The tighter the weave, the better—especially with newer pieces. Contemporary “tapestry”quality rugs pack the stitches in at a supertight 80 weft per inch. Finally, rarity and size will certainly affect value, but they mean little without quality of design and execution.

Classic-era wearing blankets underwent a stylistic progression, from first through third phases, with the earlier phases being more rare and generally more valuable. But it’s important to realize that styles are not firmly chronological, and dating is imprecise. Experts often date blankets by the presence of certain materials or design elements, but there’s no reason why a weaver working for 40 or 50 years might not reach back stylistically to something she did before. Or why she might not hold on to a favorite material for many years and pull it out later for a special weaving.

Most weavers shy away from the sand painting subject, fearing retribution from the gods. This tapestry-quality example is by Ruby Manuelito, last re-maining weaver in the family of famed medicine man/weaver Hosten Klah.

(Courtesy Garland’s Navajo Rugs)

Because it’s believed that the Navajo women were taught to weave by their Pueblo neighbors, their earliest known designs reflect the Pueblo aesthetic, and the Spanish influence behind that. Says Becker, “We think the first things the Navajo wove were manta-style pieces that they learned from the Zuni: natural brown shoulder blankets with deep indigo blue borders.” But while Pueblo designs were constrained by tradition and ceremonial structure, Navajo weaving became ever more complex and creative, gradually adapting and evolving the manta into what came to be known as the first-phase Ute-style chief’s blanket, typified by the Roadshow example.

That one had everything connoisseurs look for in a first-phase: a classic plain-stripe design in luminous bands of brown, indigo and creamy white, a tight weave and the presence of early handspun churro wool. An added bonus was the use of bayeta red, unraveled and finely respun, dyed red with lac or cochineal. Bayeta was a rare and costly trade yarn, used with great restraint.

Concurrent with the first-phase, Ute was the red bayeta poncho serape (top), the rarest and most highly prized of Navajo blankets. Becker estimates that there are only 30 good examples of poncho serapes dating from 1830-1850, and most are in museums. With their complex, intricate designs composed of diamonds and stripes, mostly in bayeta red, native handspun churro white and indigo blue, they were designed to astound and impress. One of these, says Becker, will be the first Navajo blanket to hit the million-dollar mark.

In the latter phases of chief’s blankets, stripes started to be overlaid with rectangles or squares in a 9-spot or 23-spot layout. Gradually the squares gave way to diamonds, and over time, designs became serrated, stepped and ever more complex.

The classic period ended as the Navajo people endured the darkest years of their history, with massive forced migration and starvation. Between the classic and the rug period came the transitional period, when weavers were still making blankets, but with more of an eye to the encroaching marketplace. As weavers got hold of aniline dyes and factory yarns, their vision expanded significantly. Case in point: the so-called German-towns, the most famous of which is the Eye Dazzler (below), a diamond pattern characterized by its explosive use of colors, each outlined in black. Good Germantowns have the pulsating quality of Op art, but use your eyes: many are overdone and lack balance in their coloration. According to Henry Monahan of Morning Star Gallery, a really good one ranges from $60,000 to $100,000.

The early rug era rolled in with the railroads around 1900. Regional styles began to proliferate, each of which has its own market fans. Today, the top end for a contemporary regional ranges from $25,000 to $50,000, says Dan Garland, and that’s usually for a big floor rug that took a year to make.

Garland calls Two Grey Hills “the Cadillac of the Navajo rugs.” Why? Because they’re hand-spun, hand-carded, with wool from their own sheep. This style is known for its beautiful natural wool colors: soft tones of gray, black, brown and ivory. Early Two Grey Hills examples range in price from $4,000 to $12,000, depending on size and quality. Today, the best examples have a tapestry-quality weave and they range from $3,000 to $15,000. The biggest name weaver of the 20th century, Daisy Taugelchee, worked in this style. While you can buy a smaller tapestry piece by her for as low as $7,500, her large, early pieces can sell between $25,000 and $100,000. Highly collected by museums, they are extremely rare on the market.

Another popular regional style is Ganado, originally centered around Lorenzo Hubbell’s trading post and known for its prevalence of red and black. Important weavers included Sadie Curtis and Elsie Wilson, whose work sells between $1,500 to $35,000, with the sweet spot between $3,000 and $7,500. Garland says the reigning queen in this style today is Ruby Hubbard.

Another regional style, Teec Nos Pos, drew much of its design inspiration from Persian rug designs introduced to weavers by the traders who saw the market’s love for things Oriental. Teec Nos Pos patterns tend to be intricate and highly detailed, and collectors like examples with a wide range of colors. There are two families dominant in this style today; according to Garland, the names you want to look for are Irene Cora and Bertha Tom.

This Germantown Eyedazzler serape (c. 1880-85) is woven entirely of commercial yarns. All colors are aniline dyes, with the exception of the red, which is dyed with cochineal.

(Courtesy the Becker Collection of Southwest Textiles)

A word about sand painting rugs. You may have read or heard some controversy about these weavings, which aim to translate into permanent form the highly complex healing ceremonies of the Navajo, performed by medicine men, with dancing, chanting and the creation of a kind of cosmic diagram in the sand. Indeed, sand paintings are always destroyed because the Navajo are worried that the gods will strike them blind if they dare to render perfection in a permanent form, such as a weaving. Between the highly complex designs and potent superstitions, sand painting rugs are a dying art. Best known in this genre is Hosten Klah, a medicine man who faced down the taboos and lived to tell the tales. One of the few known male Navajo weavers, he was often helped by his two nieces, whose own work is now prized by collectors.

Restoration is always a fraught topic, with varying opinions on what’s acceptable. Most experts agree that it’s important to clean and stabilize a piece to prevent further damage. But how much restoration is too much? More than five percent starts to affect value, says Becker. Collector and private dealer Jonathan Holstein stresses the importance of getting the right weaver for the job: “Matching the dye and the exact tightness of weave is tricky work. Strangely enough, white is a hard color to match, once it turns ivory. I’ve seen blankets where the entire white was unraveled and replaced because it couldn’t be matched.” Too much restoration can materially affect the value, depending on how much of the original blanket or rug is left at the end of the day. Says Henry Monahan: “I have a third-phase chief’s blanket that has some restoration. If it had none, it would sell for $100,000. But I’ll be lucky to get $50,000.” Always ask for before and after pictures on any work that is done.

As for fakes, experts do see high-quality reproductions coming out of Mexico, Asia and the Ukraine. According to Sotheby’s David Roche, a big group of fake Germantowns hit the market 10-15 years ago. One helpful way to tell a real Navajo weaving from a repro is the presence of “lazy lines,” a diagonal joint or break often used in the weave to save the maker from having to reach across the loom as far. Fringe is another red flag; as a rule, Navajo weavers don’t use it (except in the Germantowns), but Mexican copies often do.

New collectors will find plenty of entry points into this material. Henry Monahan recommends early double saddle blankets, which sell between $3,500 to $5,500. “They can be very minimal, nice yarns, with open brown centers and simple geometric borders.” You might also look at classic and late-classic era women’s mantas and children’s blankets, which sell at auction between $15,000 and $25,000, more at retail.

— Missy Sullivan

RECENT NOTABLE SALES

Generally, top prices are paid for the rarest mid-19th century Navajo chief blankets, not the 20th-century rugs made for the tourist trade.

$525,000
Classic Man’s Wearing Blanket, 1st Phase
Sotheby’s, 1989

$431,500
Classic Man’s Wearing Blanket, Serape
Sotheby’s, 1997

$401,500
Classic Man’s Wearing Blanket, 3rd Phase
Sotheby’s, 2001

$379,750
Classic Man’s Wearing Blanket, Serape
Sotheby’s, 2000

$317,500
Classic Chief’s Wearing Blanket, 1st Phase
Christie’s, 2003

$255,500
Classic Man’s Wearing Blanket, 1st Phase
Sotheby’s, 1997

BOOKSHELF NAVAJO TEXTILES

Walk in Beauty: The Navajo and Their Blankets
By Anthony Berlant and Mary Hunt Kahlenberg

Blanket Weaving of the Southwest
By Joe Ben Wheat