Featured Navajo blanket ..

.. unless I haven't been paying attention. Size about 28" by 32". Sorry the pics are on my car, but it the only outdoor semi-flat surface that has no snow.

Has some unfortunate moth damage, but I have seen worse and I am addressing what is there. One question I had is about the size, and how the size affects it's "purpose". Are there prescribed sizes for, for example, chief's blanket, saddle blanket, child blanket, etc. Clearly many of these, even early ones, that are found now were never used but were made for sale (so never actually used by a chief, or on a horse, etc), but still curious about the size categories. Any other info about age, etc. is welcome.

 

It does appear to be Navajo, but would be described as a small rug rather than any type of blanket. Navajo weavers produced blankets up until the beginning of the 20th century (approximately), when the market shifted to the production of rugs. Yours appears to be fairly recent in origin.

 

I agree that it looks authentic and that it's not too old. It would be nice, and I would think was intended as, something to put on a table or hung on a wall.

 

A chief's blanket, or wearing blanket/robe, is identified by the way it is woven, rather than strictly by the size. They are woven "wider than long," with the warp running top to bottom. Both are designed to be worn/hung the same way they were made on the loom. So rugs would thus be considered woven "longer than wide."

A saddle blanket comes in two shapes and sizes,
depending on the size of the horse it's to be used on: a "single," which is square, roughly 30-33" on a side; or a "double," a rectangular shape used folded in half, which is in the 30-33" by 60-66" range. I'm personally of the opinion that anything called a "saddle blanket" could be used (whether it is/was, or not) so should conform to those sizes. Something 17" x 26", or anything else outside those basic dimensions, would be considered a mat or rug.

A "child's blanket" is pretty much an over-used and meaningless term, unless it can be considered a smaller-sized wearing blanket, which again, would be related to how it was woven. (Wearing a rug doesn't make it a "robe," any more than wearing a basket on your head makes it a "hat," despite the number of claims on eBay.)

True lighter-weight "blankets" haven't been woven by the Navajo since the late 1890s, as mentioned, when competition from factories such as Pendleton, J.Capps, Buell, and others, (plus the loss of sheep during the Navajo's imprisonment at Bosque Redondo), led to them changing to weaving rugs, instead. A "chief's" or "wearing" blanket/robe is identified not by size, but by the way it was woven. Like rugs, it is designed to be hung or worn in the same direction it was originally on the loom, with the warps running top to bottom. In the case of wearing blankets, it means they are woven "wider than long," which is opposite of rugs, which are woven "longer than wide."

A saddle blanket comes in basically two shapes and sizes, depending a bit on the size of the horse it is to be used on. A "single," is square, roughly 28-32" on a side; a "double," is a rectangular shape, used folded in half, which is in the 28-32" by 59-66" range.

 

*****any more than wearing a basket on your head makes it a "hat,"*****


oh...u don't get off , that easy..............

 

I guess I wasn't making it clear. A basketry hat is one thing. A basketry bowl worn on one's head is completely different. It depends on whether it is customary, traditional, and made to be a hat.

I was making a reference to seeing too many Shasta mush bowls, pictured up-ended and called Hupa hats! Just because you can fit it on your head, doesn't make it a hat. Or, in this case, wrapping a rug around your shoulders, doesn't mean it's a robe.

 

4 a while I was coming across hupa, Yurok and karuk hats ...and had to learn to distinguish them from mush bowls........... & I did !

but....my dear @Taupou ......here I was just poking your funny bone.....and not being terribly serious......
Merry Christmas !!

 

And a Happy New Year to you!

I'm currently completely snowed-in, so have more time to check the forums! All is well, power is still on, and I'm able to enjoy an unusual (for this area) weather event. I just can't get the car out of the driveway.

(If it lasts more than a week, though, I can see it won't be as enjoyable.)

 

stay warm....stay safe......& can I sell u a shovel ??

 

Thank you for that very interesting and informative post. Way more information than I expected, and it sent me down a rabbit hole searching museum collections to find out more. I have a lot of experience with antique oriental rugs, but very little with native american weavings. Since I live in New England, I haven't had that much exposure to Navajo art in general, though I have found a fair amount of silver over the years. I did have one navajo wall hanging that was produced and given to me in the 1970's by an Aunt who bought it from a tourist site in Phoenix, but it was destroyed by moths to the point that I had to discard it years ago and before I really took the opportunity to study it.

Since then I have only found two other Navajo weavings, of which this is one. The other one I am keeping in cold storage due to my paranoia about moth damage due to past history. This one came with the moth damage, but I am going to thoroughly decontaminate it before I let it into my house. An aside about moths - is it true that this is much more of a problem in cold weather climates than it is in the southwest? If not, I wonder how so many of the early wool weavings survived to make it into museum collections.

I was most surprised by the Chief Blanket weaving technique you described, wider than long. Based on my experience with oriental rugs, that just seems so counterintuitive to use such a long loom when a smaller one could be used. But that is undoubtedly part of the reason why an authentic Chief blanket is so rare - I noticed far more "serape" of similar size and age but longer than wide in the museum collections (I searched boston museum fine arts, met, and smithsonian).

One of the other things my research showed is that although the full size blankets were no longer made due to the competition from Pendleton etc you noted, the smaller saddle blankets continued to be made. This is shown by the saddle blankets in the smithsonian collection as well as this less reliable, but I think believable in this case, vendor page: https://www.navajorug.com/pages/navajo-saddle-blankets

So this is a saddle blanket size, whether blanket or rug. But that forces me to wonder something that I couldn't find an answer to: when does a blanket become a rug? Oriental carpets are inherently different from cloth weaving, since the rugs are knotted. But since navajo blankets and rugs share the same weaving technique, it seems likely to me that it would be a matter of fineness of the weave and density of the finished product. But are there any metrics for this? Either threads per inch or weight per square inch? If so I couldn't find them. Have you run across such a thing?

 

The difference between blankets and rugs is based primarily on thickness of the weave, as you said. Plus the size needs to be large enough to actually use as a blanket. A rug remains a rug, despite the number of stitches per inch, if it's too small to use as a blanket.

The type of textile woven also depends somewhat on the breed of sheep that supply the wool. Before the Navajo were sent to Bosque Redondo, they had Navajo-Churro sheep, which produced wool that was different than that produced by the breeds the U.S. government replaced the Churro with. So the government attempt to eradicate the Churro, that coincided with the turn to making rugs rather than blankets, also contributed to the type of textiles the Navajo made. Churro are making a slight comeback, but will probably never return to what they were.

Saddle blankets, technically, don't qualify as blankets, it's just what they have been traditionally called. They are more of a pad, so generally are thicker. They are usually heavier than rugs, even. But in the case of saddle blankets, it's the size that matters. They usually have more simple designs, as well. There's a book about them, "Navajo Saddle Blankets" by Lane Colter, that you might want to check out.

 

One of the reasons that Navajo weavings are so prone to moth damage is that the wool was rarely washed before use, just combed/carded and spun. (Not a lot of water available for such preparation.) So the lanolin is still present, which is particularly attractive to moths. Many older pieces have since been sent to dry cleaners, or washed (often leading to running dyes), which does at least have the benefit of removing the attractive lanolin. Dry cleaners have also often included anti-moth treatments, at least in the past. I do not know if they still do.