THIS IS A VERY UNIQUE WORK OF ART.
THE ARTIST, ROSE SMITH OF MENTMORE,
A NATIVE AMERICAN NAVAJO INDIAN,
HAS CREATED AN INCREDIBLY DETAILED WEAVE.
THIS PIECE IS FROM AN ESTATE LIQUIDATION OF A PROMINENT BARTLESVILLE, OKLAHOMA (OK) OIL MAN,
WHO TRAVELED THE SOUTHWEST AND RESERVATIONS
EXTENSIVELY.
THE WOVEN RUG TEXTILE IS HOME SPUN GANADO WOOL.
A TYPICAL LEON HUBBELL CHOICE PATTERN IN EARTH TONES.
RED EARTH BROWN, BEIGE, CREAM, WHITE, AND GREY.
ORIGINAL RESERVATION TRADE LABEL.
INDICATES ARTIST IS FROM THE MENTMORE PUEBLO
NEAR GALLUP NEW MEXICO (NM).
THE SADDLE BLANKET MEASURES 38" LONG BY 18" WIDE.
WOW!! WE CANNOT GIVE THIS PIECE ENOUGH CREDIT.
THERE WILL BE NO DISAPPOINTMENT WITH THIS FINE WORK.
ARTIST ORIGINAL / AO
ONE OF A KIND / OOAK FOLK ART
CIRCA 1965.
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FYI
The Navajo (Navajo: Dine or Naabeeho) are a Native American people of the Southwestern United States. They are the second largest federally recognized tribe in the United States with 300,460 enrolled tribal members as of 2015. The Navajo Nation constitutes an independent governmental body that which manages the Navajo reservation in the Four Corners area, including over 27,000 square miles of land in Arizona, Utah, and New Mexico. The Navajo language is spoken throughout the region with most Navajo speaking English as well.
The states with the largest Navajo populations are Arizona (140,263) and New Mexico (108,306). Over three-quarters of the Navajo population reside in these two states.
Until contact with Pueblos and the Spanish, the Navajo were largely hunters and gatherers. The tribe adopted crop farming techniques from the Pueblo peoples, growing mainly corn, beans, and squash. When the Spanish arrived, the Navajo began herding sheep and goats as a main source of trade and food, with meat becoming an essential component of the Navajo diet. Sheep also became a form of currency and status symbol among the Navajo based on the overall quantity of herds a family maintained. In addition, the practice of spinning and weaving wool into blankets and clothing became common and eventually developed into a form of highly valued artistic expression.
The Navajo are speakers of a Na-Dene Southern Athabaskan languages known as Dine bizaad (lit. 'People's language'). The language comprises two geographic, mutually intelligible dialects. It is closely related to the Apache language as the Navajo and Apache are believed to have migrated from northwestern Canada and eastern Alaska, where the majority of Athabaskan speakers reside. It has been suggested that speakers of various other Athabaskan languages located in Canada can still comprehend the Navajo language despite the geographic and linguistic deviation of the languages. Additionally, some Navajo speak Navajo Sign Language, which is either a dialect or daughter of Plains Sign Talk, as well as some being speakers of Plains Sign Talk itself.
Archaeological and historical evidence suggests the Athabaskan ancestors of the Navajo and Apache entered the Southwest around 1400 CE. The Navajo oral tradition is said to retain references of this migration.
The name “Navajo” comes from the late 18th century via the Spanish (Apaches de) Navajo "(Apaches of) Navajo", which was derived from the Tewa navahū "fields adjoining a ravine". The Navajo call themselves Dine. Some Dine find the term Navajo offensive because of its' similarity to the word navaja (meaning: razor, pocket knife, or jack knife in Spanish).
Like other Apacheans, the Dine were semi-nomadic from the 16th through the 20th centuries. Their extended kinship groups had seasonal dwelling areas to accommodate livestock, agriculture and gathering practices. As part of their traditional economy, Dine groups may have formed trading or raiding parties, traveling relatively long distances.
Historically, the structure of the Dine society is largely a matrilineal system, in which women owned livestock and land. Once married, a Dine man would move to live with his bride in her dwelling and among her mother's people and clan. Daughters (or, if necessary, other female relatives) were traditionally the ones who received the generational property inheritance. The children are "born to" and belong to the mother's clan, and are "born for" the father's clan. The mother's eldest brother has a strong role in her children's lives. As adults, men represent their mother's clan in tribal politics. The clan system is exogamous: people must date and marry partners outside their own clans, which for this purpose include the clans of their four grandparents.
Navajo spiritual practice is about restoring balance and harmony to a person's life to produce health. One exception to the concept of healing is the Beauty Way ceremony: the Kinaalda, or a female puberty ceremony. Others include the Hooghan Blessing Ceremony and the "Baby's First Laugh Ceremony." Otherwise, ceremonies are used to heal illnesses, strengthen weakness, and give vitality to the patient. Ceremonies restore Hozhǫ́, or beauty, harmony, balance, and health.
When suffering from illness or injury, Navajo traditionally seek a certified, credible Hatałii (medicine man) for healing, before turning to Western medicine (e.g., hospitals). The medicine man will use several methods to diagnose the patient's ailments. This may include using special tools such as crystal rocks, and abilities such as hand-trembling and Hatał (chanting prayer). The medicine man chooses a specific healing chant for that type of ailment. Short prayers for protection may take only a few hours, and in some cases, the patient is expected to do a follow-up afterward. The medicine man may give advice, such as avoiding sexual relations, personal contact, animals, certain foods, and certain activities for a period of time.
The Navajo believe that certain ailments can be caused by violating taboos. Contact with lightning-struck objects, exposure to taboo animals such as snakes, and contact with the dead create the need for healing afterward. Protection ceremonies, especially the Blessing Way Ceremony, are used for Navajo who leave the boundaries of the four sacred mountains. It is used extensively for Navajo warriors or soldiers going to war. Upon return, the person receives an Enemy Way Ceremony, or Nidaa', to get rid of the evil elements in the body, and to restore balance in his or her life. This is important for Navajo warriors or soldiers returning from battle. Warriors or soldiers often suffer spiritual or psychological damage from participating in warfare, and the Enemy Way Ceremony helps restore harmony to the person, mentally and emotionally.
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Navajo rugs and blankets (Navajo: diyogí) are textiles produced by Navajo people of the Four Corners area of the United States. Navajo textiles are highly regarded and have been sought after as trade items for over 150 years. Commercial production of handwoven blankets and rugs has been an important element of the Navajo economy. As one expert expresses it, "Classic Navajo serapes at their finest equal the delicacy and sophistication of any pre-mechanical loom-woven textile in the world."
Navajo textiles were originally utilitarian blankets for use as cloaks, dresses, saddle blankets, and similar purposes. Toward the end of the 19th century, weavers began to make rugs for tourism and export. Typical Navajo textiles have strong geometric patterns. They are a flat tapestry-woven textile produced in a fashion similar to kilims of Eastern Europe and Western Asia, but with some notable differences. In Navajo weaving, the slit weave technique common in kilims is not used, and the warp is one continuous length of yarn, not extending beyond the weaving as fringe. Traders from the late 19th and early 20th century encouraged adoption of some kilim motifs into Navajo designs.
The original function of Navajo weaving was to produce clothing: "shoulder robes, rectangular panel or wrap-around-dresses, semi-tailored shirts, breechcloths, and a variety of belts, shoulder robes, sashes, hair ties, and garters." The production of weaving flourished after the mid 1800s for trade with the white settlers.
Pueblo influence
The Navajo may have learned to weave from their Pueblo Indian neighbors when they moved into the Four Corners region during the period from 1300 to 1500. Some experts contend that the Navajo were not weavers until after the 17th century. Navajo obtained cotton through local trade routes before the arrival of the Spanish, after which time they began to use wool. The Pueblo and Navajo were not generally on friendly terms due to frequent Navajo raids on Pueblo settlements, yet many Pueblo sought refuge with their Navajo neighbors in the late 17th century to evade the conquistadors in the aftermath of the Pueblo Revolt. This social interchange is the probable origin of the distinctive Navajo weaving tradition. Spanish records show that Navajo people began to herd sheep and weave wool blankets from that time onward.
The extent of Pueblo influence on Navajo weaving is uncertain. As Wolfgang Haberland notes, "Prehistoric Puebloan textiles were much more elaborate than historic ones, as can be seen in the few remnants recovered archaeologically and in costumed figures in pre-contact kiva murals." Haberland suggests that the absence of surviving colonial-era Pueblo textile examples make it impossible to do more than conjecture about whether the creative origins of Navajo weaving arose from Navajo culture or were borrowed from the neighboring people.
Written records establish the Navajo as fine weavers for at least the last 300 years, beginning with Spanish colonial descriptions of the early 18th century. By 1812, Pedro Piño called the Navajo the best weavers in the province. Few remnants of 18th-century Navajo weaving survive; the most important surviving examples of early Navajo weaving come from Massacre Cave at Canyon de Chelly, Arizona. In 1804, a group of Navajo were shot and killed there, where they were seeking refuge from Spanish soldiers. For a hundred years the cave remained untouched due to Navajo taboos until a local trader named Sam Day entered it and retrieved the textiles. Day separated the collection and sold it to various museums. The majority of Massacre Cave blankets feature plain stripes, yet some exhibit the terraces and diamonds characteristic of later Navajo weaving.
Commerce expanded after the Santa Fe Trail opened in 1822, and greater numbers of examples survive. Until 1880, all such textiles were blankets as opposed to rugs. In 1850, these highly prized trade items sold for $50 in gold, a huge sum at that time.
Railroad service reached Navajo lands in the early 1880s and resulted in considerable expansion of the market for Navajo woven goods. According to Kathy M'Closkey of the University of Windsor in Ontario, Canada, "wool production more than doubled between 1890 and 1910, yet textile production escalated more than 800%". Purchases of manufactured yarn compensated for the deficit in wool production. Federal government reports affirmed that this weaving, which was performed almost exclusively by women, was the most profitable Navajo industry during that era. Quality declined in some regards as the weavers attempted to keep up with demand. However, in today society an average price of a rug goes for about $800.00.
Several European-American merchants influenced Navajo weaving during the next decades. The first to advertise Navajo textiles in a catalog was C. N. Cotton in 1894. Cotton encouraged professional production and marketing among his peers and the weavers whose work they handled. Another trader named John. B. Moore, who settled in the Chuska Mountains in 1897 attempted to improve the quality of textiles he traded. He attempted to regulate the cleaning and dyeing process of artisans who did business with him, and shipped wool intended for higher grade weaving outside the region for factory cleaning. He limited the range of dyes in textiles he traded and refused to deal fabric that had included certain commercially produced yarns. Moore's catalogs identified individual textile pieces rather than illustrating representative styles. He appears to have been instrumental in introducing new motifs to Navajo weaving. Carpets from the Caucasus region were popular among Anglo-Americans at that time. Both the Navajo and the Caucasus weavers worked under similar conditions and in similar styles, so it was relatively simple for them to incorporate Caucasus patterns such as an octagonal motif known as a gul.
Traders encouraged the locals to weave blankets and rugs into distinct styles. They included "Two Gray Hills" (predominantly black and white, with traditional patterns), "Teec Nos Pos" (colorful, with very extensive patterns), "Ganado" (founded by Don Lorenzo Hubbell), red dominated patterns with black and white, "Crystal" (founded by J. B. Moore), Oriental and Persian styles (almost always with natural dyes), "Wide Ruins," "Chinle," banded geometric patterns, "Klagetoh", diamond type patterns, "Red Mesa" and bold diamond patterns. Many of these patterns exhibit a fourfold symmetry, which is thought by Professor Gary Witherspoon to embody traditional ideas about harmony or Hozh.
Large numbers of Navajo continue to weave commercially. Contemporary weavers are more likely to learn the craft from a community college course, as opposed to family. A Navajo woman struggles and sacrifices, but for some this is their only source of income. Contemporary Navajo textiles have suffered commercially from two sets of pressures: extensive investment in pre-1950 examples and price competition from foreign imitations. Modern Navajo rugs are indeed notable for their high prices.
Cultural perspectives
Weaving plays a role in the creation myth of Navajo cosmology, which articulates social relationships and continues to play a role in Navajo culture. According to one aspect of this tradition, a spiritual being called "Spider Woman" instructed the women of the Navajo how to build the first loom from exotic materials including sky, earth, sunrays, rock crystal, and sheet lightning. Then "Spider Woman" taught the Navajo how to weave on it.
Use of traditional motifs sometimes leads to the mistaken notion that these textiles serve a purpose in Navajo religion. Actually these items have no use as prayer rugs or any other ceremonial function, and controversy has existed among the Navajo about the appropriateness of including religious symbolism in items designed for commercial sale. The financial success of purported ceremonial rugs led to their continued production.
