Navajo Child's Blankets

Navajo weaving tells many stories of Diné encounters with so many people and places. The blankets tell stories of night rituals and traditionalism, the ceremonies within those fertile canyons echoing with night chants and the arid smell of cedar smoke and cottonwoods. They also tell the stories of early trading days with the Spanish, Utes, Anglo traders, colonialism, dis-location and latter assimilations; all woven into the warp and weft of what are considered some of the finest aesthetically balanced weavings created by human hands.

Experiences of these cultures are interwoven with a story of each encounter, marking the widths of indigo and dark brown bands from the nearby Pueblos. Images of complex terraces forming central diamond motifs came from the Spanish. Pictorial elements woven in newfound colors of aniline dyes traded from the Anglos inevitably dictated directions that Diné weavers were to take into the century ahead.

~Tony Abeyta