A Rare and Early Navajo Twilled Blanket

Navajo

1750 - 1820 | Wool | Item 185

This blanket was believed to have been collection by an American soldier around 1848 in relation to the Mexican / American War period. Warps are single ply handspun white wool. The red weft is raveled bayeta dyed (1mm) with cochineal and is woven as a herring bone twill. The light blue weft is white wool dyed with indigo and woven in a diamond twill. The darker blue bands are white handspun wool dyed with indigo and is adjacent to the red weft in a herringbone twill. The fine bands of hand spun wool are dyed with natural green and yellow (possibly mixtures of indigo and rabbit brush) and are woven within the red weft and in a herring bone twill. The remaining side selvage cords are (2) 3 ply of hand spun white wool dyed with dark indigo. There is one remaining embellished corner tassel of handspun in dark indigo blue.

This blanket has pueblo characteristics but the construction is Navajo. The embellished corner tassel is a unique trait to the Navajo. There is no supplemental weft as found in pueblo weavings when going from a diamond twill to a diagonal twill (herring bone). The 1 mm red bayeta is indicative of the early, coarse bayeta coming out of what is now Mexico prior to Mexico’s independence from Spain.

The blanket is woven with open warps, or what is called open twill, meaning one half of the design is carried by the weft, and the other half by the warps. With this blanket, the warps are a buttery white color, so the diamonds in the twill pattern are two toned: light, indigo blue and white. This condition carries through with the whole blanket. According to Joe Ben Wheat, the Navajo’s stopped weaving in open twill by around 1805. After this period, Navajo filled in all the exposed warps making an all weft faced weaving. The Pueblo weavers have continued to weave in open twill, especially with their twill mantas. One of the qualities of open twill is that the blanket is strong, but has much less wool in it, which results in a more garment like weaving – light and airy.

It’s interesting to note that the layout of this blanket is almost identical to a prehistoric cotton textile discussed in Kate Peck Kent’s publication The Cultivation And Weaving Of Cotton In Prehistoric Southwestern United States (New Series – Volume 47, Part B 1957) where in Plate 8 and Fig. 94E, the same layout is seen. Plate 8 is the photograph of the textile and Fig. 94E is the drawing of the textile. Here we see the diamond twill as the background of the textile and the herring bone twill executed as the bands of the textile. These early prehistoric weavings in time became the Pueblo weavers and it is these Pueblo weavers that taught the Navajo how to weave. This design could be an example of early Navajo weaving showing strong influence of the Pueblo technique. Condition is original and compromised with holes and much wear to the sides.

Price
Not for sale
Dimensions 50" by 36.5
Condition Fair
Provenance Private Texas family
A rare and early Navajo twilled blanket, 1750 - 1820 with cochineal dyed unravelled bayeta.
This corner shows the Navajo embellished corner in dark indigo blue. The existing 2 - 3 ply lighter indigo blue cords for the selvage remain barley intact.
A close up view of the Navajo embellished corner. Notice the coarse (1 mm) width of the unravelled red bayeta strands. By 1820 and the change in political climate, much finer bayeta was coming in from Europe often dyed with lac instead of cochineal.
The middel figure here (E) is an exact copy of how this blanket is layed out with the alternating diamond twill with herringbone twill.
This is the original remanent for which the sketch above (E) was made. This is cottton, not wool, since the Spanish had yet to arrive with their sheep.