Unidentified artist (Diné [Navajo]), “A Rose”
Navajo weavings from the earliest times featured abstract designs, such as striped wearing blankets, and the later elaborate geometrical patterns in rugs. Pictorial elements, such as birds or flags, appear in Navajo weavings as early as the 1860s, but they are rare. Pictorial weavings became more common in the early twentieth century. Weavers made designs that introduced a range of representations. Some weavers drew upon traditional Diné culture with depictions of ceremonial dancers or patterns based upon sandpaintings. Others branched out with portrayals of animals, plants, and scenes of everyday life of Diné people.
The weaving called “A Rose” is very unusual, even as a pictorial weaving. This weaving re-interprets a Euro-American motif from textiles such as rugs and tapestries. The typical Euro-American design features a large central element of flowers with corner elements and other ornamentation. The weaver of “A Rose” could have taken inspiration from an item similar to the “Fire Screen” in The W.H. Stark House Dining Room. That “Fire Screen” has a large central element of a vase of flowers, including what appear to be pink roses. The vase is an amphora-shape with large rounded body, small neck, and prominent side handles. The vase in “A Rose” is a similar amphora-type. This “Fire Screen” has corner elements, though not as prominent as “A Rose.” Both works have curving ornamentation of ribbons or other flourishes.
The creators of “A Rose” and “Fire Screen” each use a process where straight lines build the image. Navajo weavers use an upright loom of vertically stretched warp threads; they pull the horizontal weft threads through the warp threads to make the pattern and the weaving. The Euro-American needlepoint crafters start with a canvas grid of straight lines, and they take diagonal stitches over the gridlines to cover the canvas with rows of stitches. The needle pointer of the “Fire Screen” used small stitches and varied thread colors to create an illusion of three-dimensionality. The weaver of “A Rose,” while depicting curved objects, emphasized the linear aspect of the process. She (most Diné weavers are female) used rectangular shapes to build her images, even when they were round like the roses. She took inspiration from Euro-American imagery, and yet interpreted it in an abstracted, geometric way, so that she reasserted her own culture’s aesthetics.
The grouping of Pictorial Weavings will be on view in the Lobby of the Stark Museum of Art until early June. Be sure and stop by to view them and enjoy these roses for Valentine’s Day and beyond.
Unidentified artist (Diné [Navajo]), “A Rose,” natural handspun wool and commercial yarns; commercial dyes, 63 x 48 inches, Stark Museum of Art, Orange, Texas, Bequest of H.J. Lutcher Stark, 1965, 82.900.188
FEATURED IMAGE: Unknown, “Fire Screen,” (detail of photograph of The W.H. Stark House Dining Room), c. 1900, cloth and wood, 13 3/4 x 41 3/4 x 25 inches (35 x 106 x 63.5 cm), The W.H. Stark House, 61.900.31.