A Guide to Navajo Rug Weaving Styles from Bair's Indian Trading.

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~ Guide to Authentic Navajo Rug Weaving Styles~
This page serves as a broad guide for the great variations that exist among and within traditional and contemporary Navajo rug weaving styles. Most of the styles are named for the local trading post for the area in which those styles were developed, such as Chinle, Crystal, Ganado, Klagetoh, Red Mesa, Teec Nos Pos, Two Grey Hills, and Wide Ruins. Additional examples of rugs and expanded text will continue to be updated. Please check back.

Traditional, Regional and Non-regional
Navajo Rug Styles

Burntwater Burntwater style Navajo rug

The Burntwater style is among the newer ones to develop. It has evolved from the traditional Ganado, Two Grey Hills/Toadlena styles that feature bordered, geometric designs with central, terraced diamonds, but woven in the native vegetal colors. The style arose out of the Wide Ruins/Burntwater area south of Ganado, Arizona.

"Weaver Philomena Yazzie is credited with creating the first such rug in 1968, using vegetal-dyed colors. Burntwater trader Don Jacobs encouraged this innovation, and the Arizona Highways rug issue of July 1974 made it famous." Quoted portion from, A Guide to Navajo Weavings, by Kent McManis & Robert Jeffries

First Phase Chief
First Phase Chief blankets (1800-1850), elaborated on the simple white and black or brown handspun striped weavings of the late 1700's. Indigo stripes were added and the use of red (from raveled baize or bayeta yarn), bordering the indigo stripes was a variation especially in demand as a trade item. This addition of red likely occurred in the latter half of the period.
Second Phase Chief blankets with twelve small red bars or rectangles overlapped the same time frame, but were woven up through 1865 or 1870, as the 3rd Phase Chief patterns emerged with a central terraced diamond, quarter diamonds in each corner and half diamonds midpoint at each end, and midpoint along the top and the bottom edges. Each pattern was woven wider than tall as a wearing blanket.

Second Phase Chief 2nd Phase Chief style Navajo rug

The 2nd Phase Chief pattern refers to the addition of twelve small red bars or rectangles woven into wearing blankets of the mid to late Classic Period (1840 - 1863). The period ended abruptly when the Navajo people were rounded up and imprisoned at Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, NM (1863-1868). Blankets made with this pattern and with the spectacular 3rd Phase Chief pattern were popular trade goods and continued to be woven into the Transition Period from 1863 to 1890. Still popular today, these designs are woven now as rugs.
2nd Chief blankets overlapped the same time frames as 1st Phase and 3rd Phase, as the patterns of the latter emerged with a central terraced diamond, quarter diamonds in each corner and half diamonds midpoint at each end, and midpoint along the top and the bottom edges.
The Navajo people did not have chiefs, but the blankets they wove with the striped patterns (1st, 2nd, & 3rd Phase Chief), were highly regarded as a trade item and worn by chiefs of other tribes, and were particularly prized by the Plains Indians.

Third Phase Chief blankets were woven towards the end of the late Classic Period (1840-1863), first appearing around 1860, and were still woven into the 1870's and beyond, well into the Transition Period (1863-1890). The bars of the 2nd Phase Chief blankets gave way to the 3rd Phase patterns which emerged with a central terraced diamond, quarter diamonds in each corner and half diamonds midpoint at each end, and midpoint along the top and the bottom edges. These blankets were truly stunning in all regards and continue to be a striking design.
It's important to note that the Classic Period of Navajo weaving (1840-1863), ended abruptly when the Navajo people were rounded up and imprisoned at Bosque Redondo, Fort Sumner, NM (1863-1868), under the harshest of conditions.
Speaking of the elaborately woven 3rd Phase Chief pattern, "An estimated 90% of 'chief' and other wearing blankets were traded to Cheyenne, Kiowa, Sioux, and Arapaho Indians rich enough to afford them, and to other men who wanted to appear larger than life." "Navajo Rugs, The Essential Guide," by Don Dedera

Third Phase Chief

Chinle Chinle pattern Navajo rug

One of the three styles of banded rugs is the Chinle, originally named for the town in Arizona near Canyon de Chelly, but it is the most commonly woven style due to its simplicity and is now woven across the Navajo reservation. Typically, it's borderless and the least complex of the banded styles alternating plain color stripes with horizontal bands of geometric designs including diamonds, squash blossoms, and chevrons. They will often times contain the distinctive design element of "railroad tracks." Colors are usually pastel or earth-tones in conjunction with white, natural gray, golds, and greens but they can also be bright colors. "Chinle weavings continue in the banded style in earth-tone colors, but their identification by pattern has become difficult at best, as they share many characteristics of Wide Ruins and Crystal textiles." Quoted portion is from, "A Guide to Navajo Weavings," by Kent McManis & Robert Jeffries, published by Treasure Chest Books.

One of the three styles of banded rugs is the Crystal and features the distinctive design characteristic of "wavy" lines created by alternating weft threads of two or three different colors. Not to be compared to the old Crystal style, this newer pattern also was developed in the Western New Mexico area of the Crystal Trading Post since the late 1930s and was promoted by by Don Jensen when he took over the Crystal Trading Post in 1944. Popular design elements include bands of squash blossoms, diamonds, triangles, or stars between narrow bands of wavy lines. Colors are usually muted earth tones, but may include pastels, pinks, or yellows. The Chinle and Wide Ruins rugs are the other two banded styles of Navajo weavings.

Crystal Crystal style Navajo rug

(G-178)

Eyedazzler Style Navajo Rugs Klagetoh, which means "Hidden Springs" is a community south of Ganado, AZ and about 10 miles north of Wide Ruins on the Navajo Reservation. The use of a single or double central diamond motif is seen in Two Grey Hills, Burntwater, Ganado, and Klagetoh style weavings with the distinction between one and the other being made strictly on the use of color. Some consider this style to be a subtype of Ganado rugs. The distinctions have become blurred between several styles today. Generally, the Ganado and Klagetoh styles have less complex designs than Two Grey Hills and Burntwater style weavings.

Ganado Ganado style Navajo rug

Perhaps the best known of all Navajo rugs, the Ganado style always features a red background. A central design element such as a single or double terraced diamond or a cross is generally always present. Terraced triangles, zigzags, and other geometric shapes occupy each corner. A black or dark outer border is usually present and is often joined with a white or light colored inner border. Juan Lorenzo Hubbell began trading with with Navajos in the late 1870's and from his trading post in Ganado he began to encourage the area's weavers to produce a higher quality weaving. For additional strength he insisted on the use of wool warp rather than a cotton string warp and he discouraged the use of bright colors, preferring the deep aniline dyed red and natural wool colors.

Additional Ganado Patterns Ganado pattern Navajo rug

Klagetoh Style Navajo Rugs Klagetoh, which means "Hidden Springs" is a community south of Ganado, AZ and about 10 miles north of Wide Ruins on the Navajo Reservation. The use of a single or double central diamond motif is seen in Two Grey Hills, Burntwater, Ganado, and Klagetoh style weavings with the distinction between one and the other being made strictly on the use of color. Some consider this style to be a subtype of Ganado rugs. The distinctions have become blurred between several styles today. Generally, the Ganado and Klagetoh styles have less complex designs than Two Grey Hills and Burntwater style weavings.

The manta began as a one piece wraparound blanket dress woven wider than long. This popular style of dress, woven by 18th century Navajo women gave way to a two piece dress. This newer item was made from two identical blankets that were sewn together at the top and sides leaving places for the head and arms to pass through. A belt or sash was worn with it. This dress was only worn by Navajo women and was never traded to or worn by other Indians.
Sources of information include "Navajo Weaving Tradition, 1650 to the Present," by Alice Kaufman and Christopher Selser

Manta

Non-Regional & Geometric Non-regional Navajo rug.

Patterns of Non-regional and Geometric rugs vary widely and incorporate amazing examples of the weaving skills of the Navajo. The geometric pictured on the left was woven of all natural handspun and hand carded wool with the use of no dyes. Specialty rugs such as pieces woven in round and cross shapes show great innovation. The Twill weave, as shown below in the image on the far right, is a complex pattern using multiple heddles to manipulate the vertical warp yarns enabling the horizontal weft yarn to be utilized in an uncommon manner to create design effects that include diamonds, herringbone, and other geometric patterns. Twill weaving is also called double weaving because the front and back are mirror images of each other (see photo showing both sides of twill weave). Saddle blankets are part of this category as well, since they are woven all over the Navajo Nation.

Some additional examples of Non-regional, Geometric, and Specialty Rugs

"Weavings with pictorial elements may have first appeared as early as the 1840s. Four small birds can be seen on a wearing blanket owned by the Cheyenne chief White Antelope when he was killed at the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864. A photo dated to 1873 shows a Navajo weaver with a U.S. flag-design she had made. By the 1880s and 90s, textiles with trains, animals, people and letters from the alphabet started to appear. At first these were usually only floating design elements. But soon the pictorial pattern became the main focus of the weaving, and some featured fully developed scenes." From, A Guide to Navajo Weavings, by Kent McManis & Robert Jeffries

Pictorial Bird Pictorial Navajo rug

Additional Pictorial Patterns Pictorial Navajo rug

And a few more Pictorials...

And, just one more!

Reservation Pictorial Navajo rug by Cecilia Curley

Red Mesa Outline The Red Mesa Outline evolved from the Eyedazzler weavings of the Transitional Period (1863-1890), and is sometimes associated with Teec Nos POs weavings due to their physical proximity, though their origins and styles are different. Red Mesa outline rugs feature serrated diamonds outlined in multiple colors for a dizzying effect. Many of these weavings have a very nice border treatment.

The revival of earlier textile patterns is an on-going process. In the late 1870's Juan Lorenzo Hubbell encouraged weavers at his trading post in Ganado, AZ to weave rugs with blanket patterns from the Classic Period (1840-1863). Hubbell had artists paint pattern samples for weavers that can still be viewed today.
J.B. Moore at the Crystal Trading Post in 1910, produced a color catalog of rug styles that is available in reprint.
In the 1920's, H.L. "Cozy McSparron and Mary Cabot Wheelwright prompted a revival with their efforts to return to the Classic Period of borderless banded rugs and revived interest in natural vegetal dyes.
In the 1990's, trader Bruce Burnham began a revival of Germantown patterns woven from replications of the yarn used in this style during the last 30 years of the 1800's. Also, weavers on their own pay tribute to classic Hubbell designs with stepped diamonds, crosses, and deep red colors as well as to other regional styles that developed at trading posts around the Navajo reservation. And Steve Getzwiller has helped revive the use of churro wool in Navajo weavings.

Revival Revival pattern Navajo rug

Sandpainting

A Storm pattern rug was first pictured in a color catalog produced and distributed in 1911, by J.B. Moore of the Crystal Trading Post in New Mexico. In the catalog he represented these weavings as being "legendary designs embodying a portion of the Navajo mythology." Other accounts of the style have it that the design may have appeared on flour sacks or the tags of the sacks in the Western Reservation area, possibly around Flagstaff, Arizona or that a trader at Tuba City or Tonalea, Arizona or at the Red Lake Trading Post may have developed it around the turn of the 20th century. Whatever the origin, the design has remained a very popular one and weavers attribute meanings to the various design elements inherent to this pattern.

Storm

Additional Storm Patterns Storm pattern Navajo weaving

Teec Nos Pos Teec Nos Pos Navajo Rug

Teec Nos POs is a settlement in Northeast Arizona and the name means "Circle of Cottonwoods." A trading post was first established there in 1905 by H.B. Noel. The pattern of weaving that developed in this area shows a definite Persian influence. Always featuring a wide border with elaborate repeating geometric motifs, these rugs are often large. They exhibit bold colors that are often outlined with a contrasting color, and intricate and exciting design work that includes diagonal, hooked, and forked zig-zag lines. Other commonly used design elements include prayer feathers, arrows, and central double diamonds.

The Tree of Life pattern is a pictorial style that first appeared around the turn of the 20th century and is also, referred to as a "Bird Pictorial." Many variations in design from the quite simple to the most complex can be found. Flowers, bees, and butterflies also may appear along with the birds. Various species of birds may be represented such as blue jays, cardinals, finches, hummingbirds, or even woodpeckers, and sometimes rabbits or squirrels may be included.
"Although its provenance is unclear, this pattern may have been derived from certain sandpainting designs. The weavings show birds perched on corn stalks, trees, or generic plants, sometimes with the vegetation growing out of a Navajo wedding basket."
Quoted sections are from, A Guide to Navajo Weavings, by Kent McManis & Robert Jeffries

Tree of Life or Bird Pictorial Tree of Life style Navajo rug

Two Grey Hills Navajo Rugs Two Grey Hills rugs are typically woven of natural, undyed, handspun wool in designs of white, black, brown. Some do utilize varying amounts of commercially prepared wool yarn and some of the black yarn may be enhanced with dye to make it uniformly black. Shades of the three basic colors are produced by carding the wool of different sheep together and by carding colors together, such as black and white together to produce shades of gray. The yarn in Two Grey Hills weavings is generally finer and the resulting design is generally crisper.

Wide Ruins Wide Ruins style Navajo rug.

The Wide Ruins style rug is one of the three banded patterns of Navajo rugs and it is the most complex in design and colors of the three (Chinle and Crystal are the other two banded rugs). Featuring vegetal dyed yarns in soft and somber, pastel earth tones, these rugs evolved from the Chinle style after 1938, when William and Sallie Lippincott bought the Wide Ruins Trading Post. They set a standard of quality in their trading area that persists to this day as the Wide Ruins rugs are generally the most finely woven of the three banded styles.

"Ye'ii (YEH-ee) figures appeared on rugs before the turn of the (20th) century. (A Ye'ii is a Navajo holy person or deity.) At first the Navajo considered putting a Ye'ii into a rug design taboo. Near the turn of the century Navajo weaver Yanapah, married to Richard Simpson (a trader near Farmington, NM), wove large, single and double-figure, vertical Ye'ii rugs. (The figures were standing upright as the rug was being woven.)"

"Ye'ii rugs developed in two other regions a few years after the turn of the century. At Shiprock, NM, trader Will Evans helped develop multiple-figure Ye'ii weavings in the 1920's. They usually had white or light-colored backgrounds with several figures positioned horizontally across the rug as it was being woven. (The figures stood upright when the rug was turned sideways after weaving.) They had a multitude of bright, aniline-dyed colors and frequently used a great deal of commercial yarn." A Guide to Navajo Weavings, by Kent McManis & Robert Jeffries
(The other area or origin noted above for Ye'ii rugs was Lukachukai, AZ.)

Ye'ii

Rainbow Ye'ii Rainbow Yei style Navajo weaving

These are not actually a different style, but rather a Ye'ii weaving with an additional design element. On many Ye'ii rugs, stretched along three sides of the rug, an elongated figure referred to as a "rainbow Yei" or "guardian" or "rainbow goddess" appears. Corn plants, pine boughs, rattles, snakes, and yucca strips are additional design elements that may be including in the weavings.

Though the spellings of this style may change, the pronunciation is essentially the same, "yay beh chay." In these rugs, the figures are always portrayed in profile rather than face forward as in the Ye'ii rugs, and the figures are human dancers representing the Navajo deities rather than being the deities themselves. The dancers in the Ye'ii Bicheii weavings are participants in the Nightway Chant, a 9 day Navajo healing ceremony. Ye'ii Bicheii is known as "Grandfather of the Gods," or as "Talking God" and appears on the last night of the winter ceremony. He is portrayed with a white mask and is at the lead of the dancers. The figures, realistically portrayed as human, usually include a medicine man (Hatathli) facing a lead dancer (Ye'ii Bicheii), followed by 6-12 dancers who are followed by a following clown who is known as a water sprinkler. Sometimes the medicine man tends to a patient who holds a ceremonial basket. The dancers are often shown with one knee bent and a foot raised showing the action of dance, and they may be all men or alternate with an equal number of women dancers. These rugs use realistic colors and much detail to portray the characters. They often times have a detailed border.

Ye'ii Bicheii

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