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Native American
Native
American weaving is mainly associated with Navajo wool blankets.
These blankets are mostly flat weaves. Navajo blankets date
back to late 18th century. Today Navajo fabrics are woven
on reservations in northern Arizona. Original styles consisted
of stripes and simple geometric shapes. Navajo weaving could
be divided into the four types of the Chief blankets, Serape
blankets, Eye Dazzler weavings, and fabrics after 1890.
Chief
blankets are amongst the well-known Navajo blankets. Contradictory
to their name, these blanks could have been worn by any member
of the tribe and not only the chiefs. The tribe members would
wrap these blankets around them, and in order for the blankets
to serve this function, they were made with their width longer
than their length. They all had horizontal stripes with wide
stripes housing minor stripes at each end of the blanket and
a similar wide strip in the center. These wide end and center stripes were
colored in red and brown; sometimes blue was added. White
and brown stripes were woven between the wide center and end
major stripes. Chief blankets went through three different
phases.
First
Phase Chief blankets, which were made between 1800 and 1860,
simply had stripes.
In
the second phase (1850-1865), rectangular shapes were woven
within the wide stripes at the top, center, and bottom of
the blankets.
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The third phase Chief blankets consisted of a large diamond
in the center of the blanket over the middle stripe and four
half diamonds at the corners and a half diamond
in the middle of each side. Third phase Chief blankets are
the most well-known of all Navajo blankets. These blankets
were woven between 1860 and 1880.
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Serape
blankets were another type of Navajo blanket woven from about
1830s to 1870s. Unlike the Chief blankets, they were long
rather than wide. Their design consisted of sometimes a combination
of diamonds, zigzags, and stripes; sometimes a combination
of zigzags and stripes; sometimes only zigzags used as stripes.
The colors used in Serape blankets included red, beige, blue,
yellow and sometimes black.
Eye-Dazzler blankets were the result of two events: the exposure
of the Navajo to Mexican and New Mexican blankets during their
confinement at the Bosque Redondo by the United States Government
from 1864 to 1868, and the introduction of synthetic dyes.
Eye-Dazzler blankets consisted of large superimposed diamonds
and toothed zigzags all along the width of the blanket. Because
of the availability of various synthetic dyes, these blankets
had very colorful palettes.
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Another
type of Eye-Dazzler blanket was woven with machine-spun yarn.
Since the yarn was manufactured in Germantown, Pennsylvania,
the blankets were sometimes referred to as the Germantown
Eye-Dazzler blankets. The design, not too different from the
hand-spun Eye-Dazzler blankets, consisted of superimposed
diamonds and triangles with toothed edges, but not necessarily
horizontally arranged. Some Germantown Dazzler blankets consisted
of several designs such as crosses and stepped diamonds inside
different color square compartments.
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By
1890, Navajo weaving moved from blankets to rugs to respond
to the interest of the market and the traders. Pictorial rugs
also became popular among traders. These rugs portrayed houses,
bows and arrows, railroad trains, tribal symbols, tribal members and gods.
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