Navajo Rug with Mythological Birds and Feathers [SOLD]

This Navajo rug is a pictorial masterpiece of extraordinary Diné weaver talent. The white center section contains four exquisite mythological birds. Each bird was executed in dark brown wool. Below each bird's tail are parallel bars of light gray and dark red. At each end of the white panel is a snowflake design.

If one uses a little imagination, the border designs reveal themselves to be bird related as well. Between the bird feathers, it is easy to speculate that the alternating designs are block versions of birds. The border is a beautiful shade of red, the only aniline dye used in the textile.

Pictorial textiles had their beginnings as early as the mid-1800s as evidenced by the serape worn by Chief Antelope at the time he died in battle in 1865 while wearing it. Two small bird designs appear in the textile. Navajo Medicine Man Hosteen Klah wove a Yei textile in 1919. The fact that nothing drastic happened to Hosteen Klah by weaving the Holy People, other weavers felt it to be safe for them to do so too. Will Evans, trader at Shiprock in the early- to mid-1900s is credited with encouraging the first of the Yei style pictorial. By the 1930s, Yei textiles were coming out of Lukachukai Trading Post. As Navajo acquired pickups and began to travel more widely from their home areas, other pictorial subjects began to appear in their works, such as airplanes, animals, buildings, vehicles, trains, and other newly discovered items of interest. Today, pictorial textiles are very popular. [Kaufman & Selser, 1985: 99-102]

Condition: very good condition. Just above the head of the two-tone bird is a section that has possibly been repaired

Provenance: this Navajo Rug with Mythological Birds and Feathers is from a Santa Fe resident who purchased it in the early 1970s from Rick Dillingham and Joe Carr when they shared a business in Santa Fe.

Reference: THE NAVAJO WEAVING TRADITION 1650 to the Present by Alice Kaufman and Christopher Selser

TAGS: textiles, Navajo Nation