Navajo Classic Blanket, c. 1865

Item: GOR5353C
Material: Vegetal & cochineal dyed plied yarn
Size: 79" x 56"
Period: Historic
Origin: Navajo

This is a mid 19th century Navajo Classic period blanket woven entirely in commercial plyed yarns dyed in natural cochineal red and aniline green. The variety of commercial yarns, including a large number of varying shades of cochineal red, may point to this weaving being made during the Navajo's imprisonment at Bosque Redondo from 1863 to 1865 as the weaver may have been supplied with small lots of yarn over a long period. The field is entirely without decoration save for visual effect of the lazy lines creating an abstracted landscape of mesas. The border plays with positive and negative space with stepped geometrics surrounding the field. This weaving hung in the Santa Fe Hilton for decades and was sold with a change in ownership.

SOLD