Navajo Weaving & Textile Books: A Collector's Authority Guide

Navajo Weaving & Textile Books reference books are highly collectible, with early studies and pattern guides commanding premium prices among textile-art collectors. The Navajo did not weave before the seventeenth century. This is the foundational historical fact — parallel to the relatively recent origin of Navajo silversmithing documented in the turquoise and jewelry literature — that distinguishes the scholarly treatment from the romanticized antiquity sometimes attributed to the tradition in commercial marketing. The Navajo (Dine) are Athabaskan-speaking people who migrated into the Southwest from subarctic regions, probably arriving in the upper San Juan drainage area in the fifteenth or sixteenth century. They acquired sheep from the Spanish colonists who arrived in New Mexico in 1598 under Juan de Onate, and they learned weaving from the Pueblo peoples — particularly from Pueblo refugees who took shelter among the Navajo during and after the Pueblo Revolt of 1680.

The Pueblo weaving tradition — itself documented in Kate Peck Kent's Pueblo Indian Textiles (School of American Research Press, 1983) — used the upright loom and cotton as the primary fiber. The Navajo adopted the Pueblo loom form but substituted churro sheep wool for cotton, and within a generation had developed a weaving tradition that surpassed the Pueblo source in output, technical ambition, and commercial scale. The churro sheep — the small, hardy Spanish breed that the colonists brought to New Mexico — produces a long-staple wool with relatively little lanolin, ideal for hand-spinning and particularly suited to the Navajo hand-spinning method that produces a hard, smooth singles yarn. The fate of the churro herd is a recurring theme in the weaving literature: the U.S. government's livestock-reduction programs of the 1930s and 1940s, intended to combat overgrazing on the reservation, destroyed much of the churro stock and forced weavers to substitute commercial processed wool, with measurable effects on yarn quality and textile character.

The pre-commercial chronology of Navajo weaving — what the scholarship calls the Classic Period (approximately 1650-1868) — produced the textiles that now command the highest prices in the collector market: the chief blankets (first-phase, second-phase, and third-phase chief blankets, classified by the progressive elaboration of their banded designs), the serapes (longer wearing blankets with more complex patterning), and the Bosque Redondo-period blankets woven during the Navajo internment at Fort Sumner, New Mexico (1864-1868), which used a distinctive combination of handspun and commercial Germantown yarns. The Classic Period textiles are primarily museum objects now — a first-phase chief blanket sold at auction in 2012 for seven-figure prices — and the collector literature documenting them is itself the collectible for the book collector. Berlant and Kahlenberg's Walk in Beauty (1977) is the primary color-plate documentation of Classic Period pieces.

Charles Avery Amsden, Navaho Weaving: Its Technic and History (Fine Arts Press, Santa Ana, California, 1934) is the beginning and remains indispensable. Amsden (1899-1941) was a curator at the Southwest Museum in Los Angeles (now part of the Autry Museum of the American West) who combined archaeological training — he had directed excavations at Starkweather Ruin in the Mimbres region — with a meticulous interest in material culture. Navaho Weaving is organized in two interlocking halves: the first covers the technic (loom construction, yarn preparation from raw fleece through carding, spinning, and plying, natural and commercial dyeing, weave structures including plain weave, twill, and the distinctive Navajo tapestry-weave technique), and the second provides a chronological history from pre-Contact Pueblo antecedents through the Classic Period, the Bosque Redondo internment, the transition from blanket to rug production, and the early-twentieth-century commercial market.

Amsden's technical analysis remains authoritative because he had the rare combination of hands-on craft understanding and scholarly rigor. His dye analysis — distinguishing the native dyes (indigo obtained through trade, native plant dyes, lac or cochineal red), the early commercial aniline dyes introduced in the 1880s, and the Germantown commercial yarns that arrived pre-dyed — established the analytical framework that Kent, Wheat, and every subsequent technical study has built upon. His chronological framework for the transition from blanket to rug weaving — the shift from a textile woven as clothing and trade goods to one woven as floor covering for the Anglo-American market — is the structural spine of the field.

Points of issue for the 1934 Fine Arts Press first edition: The first is a large quarto, approximately 10 x 13 inches. Binding: tan or buff cloth boards with a Navajo textile design stamped on the front board in a darker color (typically brown or dark red). Spine: title and author stamped in the same dark color, with the Fine Arts Press Santa Ana imprint at the foot. Text block: 261 pages of text plus 22 tipped-in color plates on glossy stock and approximately 130 black-and-white illustrations (photographs, diagrams, and line drawings) within the text. The paper stock is a good-quality coated stock for the period but is not acid-free; foxing is common, particularly on the text pages adjacent to the glossy plate inserts. Dust jacket: printed paper wrapper with illustrations of Navajo textiles; surviving jackets are scarce and add substantial premium. The print run was modest — Fine Arts Press was a small regional imprint, not a university or trade publisher — and copies in fine condition with jacket are genuinely rare. The book was reprinted by the Rio Grande Press (Glorieta, New Mexico, 1964) in a smaller-format hardcover, and by Dover Publications (New York, 1975) as a paperback. Both reprints are adequate working references. The Dover paperback, still available, is the entry point for anyone building a weaving library; the Fine Arts Press first is the collector trophy.

Amsden died in 1941 at age forty-two, making signed copies extremely rare — a closed signature pool of only seven productive years (1934-1941) and limited public-signing activity during that period. When a signed Fine Arts Press first surfaces, it is a Tier 1 trophy of the highest order.

Gladys Reichard, Spider Woman: A Story of Navajo Weavers and Chanters (Columbia University Press, New York, 1934) is the ethnographic complement to Amsden's technical treatment. Reichard (1893-1955) was a Barnard College anthropologist trained in the Boas tradition at Columbia who spent the summers of 1930 and 1931 living with a Navajo family near Ganado, learning to weave from the women of the household. Spider Woman is a first-person narrative of the learning process — the selection and preparation of wool, the spinning, the warping of the loom, the slow accumulation of technical competence through daily practice under the direction of experienced women weavers — embedded in an account of daily Navajo domestic and ceremonial life. The title references Na'ashjé'ii Asdzáá (Spider Woman), the Holy Person who, in Navajo tradition, taught the first woman to weave.

Reichard's approach was groundbreaking for its period: she centered Navajo women's knowledge and domestic experience rather than treating weaving as a decontextualized artifact. The book conveys the social texture of weaving — the conversations at the loom, the aesthetic judgments, the relationship between weaver and material — in a way that no other early source matches. The 1934 Columbia University Press first in cloth with dust jacket is the Tier 2 collector target; the book was reprinted in paperback by the University of New Mexico Press.

Gladys Reichard, Navajo Shepherd and Weaver (J.J. Augustin, New York, 1936) is the more systematic companion volume, organized as a process-by-process technical manual rather than a narrative: sheep and wool, carding and spinning, dyeing (with detailed dye recipes and color analysis), loom construction and warping, weaving technique, and design. The J.J. Augustin first (1936) is the Tier 2 target; Augustin was a specialist academic publisher, and the print run was modest. The book was reprinted by Rio Grande Press (1968). Reichard's two weaving books together constitute the essential ethnographic foundation; where Amsden provides the technical and historical architecture, Reichard provides the human dimension.

The transition from blanket to rug weaving — from a textile made for wearing to one made for floor covering — was driven by commercial forces in the late nineteenth century. As mass-produced Pendleton blankets became available through trading posts, Navajo weavers shifted production toward the Anglo-American home-furnishing market. The trading post system became the mediating institution between Navajo weavers and outside buyers, and individual traders exerted powerful influence on the designs, color palettes, sizes, and quality standards of the rugs produced in their trading areas. The result was the development of distinctive regional styles that remain the primary classification framework for Navajo rugs.

Ganado / Hubbell Trading Post. Juan Lorenzo Hubbell (1853-1930) established his trading post at Ganado, Arizona, in 1878. Hubbell's influence on Navajo rug design was systematic and deliberate: he maintained a collection of oil paintings by artist E.A. Burbank and other painters depicting idealized rug designs, which he hung in the trading post rug room as models for weavers; he insisted on deep red (aniline-dyed) as the dominant ground color; and he required black, white, and grey as the accent palette. The Ganado style — red-ground rugs with bold geometric designs in black, white, and grey, typically with a central diamond or cross motif and a dark border — became the most commercially recognized Navajo rug style and remains so today. The Hubbell Trading Post, now a National Historic Site operated by the National Park Service, preserves the rug room, the Burbank paintings, and the physical infrastructure of the trader-weaver relationship. The Hubbell family papers and trading post records, housed at the University of Arizona Special Collections, are the primary documentary archive for the system. Hubbell's influence extends into the jewelry literature as well, as the post was a center for Navajo silverwork production.

Two Grey Hills / Toadlena. The Two Grey Hills and Toadlena trading posts in the Chuska Mountains of northwestern New Mexico fostered the most technically refined regional style. Two Grey Hills rugs use only natural undyed wool — white, brown, tan, and black from carefully selected sheep — in a tapestry-weave technique at thread counts that can exceed 100 weft threads per inch. The finest Two Grey Hills weavings are textile art of the highest order, and they command prices commensurate with that status. Traders Ed Davies and George Bloomfield encouraged the natural-color, fine-weave tradition at Two Grey Hills beginning in the 1910s-1920s. Mark Winter, the current owner and operator of the Historic Toadlena Trading Post, has documented the tradition in The Master Weavers: Celebrating One Hundred Years of Navajo Textile Artists from the Toadlena/Two Grey Hills Weaving Region (Historic Toadlena Trading Post, Newcomb NM, 2011) — a book that profiles individual weavers across a century of production and is itself a Tier 2 collector target, particularly when signed by Winter.

Crystal. The Crystal Trading Post in Crystal, New Mexico, was operated by J.B. Moore from 1897 to 1911. Moore's contribution was unique: he published illustrated mail-order catalogs of Navajo rugs in 1903 and 1911, with numbered designs, dimensions, prices, and descriptions, which he mailed to potential buyers across the country. The Moore catalogs are now primary collector documents — original copies are Tier 1 rarities. Moore's design influence pushed Crystal weavers toward bordered compositions with complex geometric patterns influenced by Oriental rug designs, a direction that distinguished Crystal rugs from the Ganado style. After Moore's departure in 1911, the Crystal style evolved toward banded vegetal-dye patterns under subsequent traders. The 1903 and 1911 Moore catalogs have been reproduced in facsimile by Avanyu Publishing (Albuquerque, 1987) — the facsimile editions are Tier 3 working references and essential for any serious weaving library.

Wide Ruins. The Wide Ruins Trading Post in Wide Ruins, Arizona, under trader Bill Lippincott and his wife Sallie in the 1930s and 1940s, became the center of the vegetal-dye revival. The Lippincotts encouraged weavers to abandon commercial aniline dyes in favor of traditional plant-derived dyes — rabbitbrush (yellow), wild walnut hulls (brown), juniper berries (blue-grey), and various lichen and root dyes — producing rugs in soft earth tones with banded designs. The Wide Ruins vegetal-dye aesthetic influenced the later Chinle and Burntwater styles and continues to shape contemporary practice.

Teec Nos Pos. Rugs from the Teec Nos Pos (T'iis Nazbas) area in northeastern Arizona are the most ornate of the regional styles, featuring elaborate bordered compositions with complex geometric and sometimes curvilinear designs, extensive use of outline motifs (serrated edges around design elements), and a wider color palette than most regional styles. The complexity of Teec Nos Pos designs sometimes reflects Persian-rug and Oriental-carpet influence, transmitted through pattern books and sample rugs that traders supplied to weavers.

Storm Pattern. The Storm Pattern is a specific design motif rather than a geographic regional style, though it is associated with the western reservation trading posts, particularly the Tuba City and Red Lake areas. The motif features a central rectangle (representing the center of the world or a hogan) connected by zigzag lines (lightning) to four smaller rectangles at the corners (representing the four sacred mountains), with water bugs or other symbolic elements in the open areas. The Storm Pattern is among the most commercially popular Navajo rug designs and has been woven across the reservation; its attribution to a single trading-post origin is debated in the literature.

Chinle. The Chinle style, associated with the Chinle, Arizona, trading area, features banded designs without borders, typically in a combination of vegetal and aniline dyes. The borderless format connects Chinle rugs to the older Classic Period banded-blanket tradition. Trader Cozy McSparron at the Thunderbird Lodge in Canyon de Chelly encouraged the Chinle style from the 1930s forward.

Burntwater. The Burntwater style, named for the Burntwater Trading Post south of Ganado, is a relatively recent development (late twentieth century) that combines the fine tapestry-weave technique of Two Grey Hills with the vegetal-dye color palette of Wide Ruins. Burntwater rugs feature soft earth-tone colors at high thread counts, often with intricate geometric designs. The style represents a conscious synthesis by contemporary weavers drawing on multiple regional traditions.

Pictorial. Pictorial Navajo rugs incorporate representational imagery — livestock, trains, pickup trucks, American flags, birds, corn plants, yei (Holy People) figures, and landscape elements — rather than or in addition to geometric abstract designs. Pictorial weaving has a long history (nineteenth-century Navajo textiles include pictorial elements), but it gained commercial prominence in the twentieth century. Yei and Yeibichai rugs, depicting Navajo Holy People or dancers from the Nightway ceremony, occupy a complex cultural position: some Navajo view the depiction of sacred figures in commercial textiles as inappropriate, while others consider the rugs a legitimate artistic tradition. The collector literature addresses this tension with varying degrees of sensitivity.

Gilbert Maxwell, Navajo Rugs: Past, Present & Future (Desert-Southwest Publications, multiple editions beginning in the 1960s) is the most widely circulated popular reference on Navajo rug collecting, regional style identification, and trading post history. Maxwell operated a trading post and gallery in Farmington, New Mexico, and wrote from direct commercial experience with the Navajo rug trade. The book surveys all major regional styles with illustrations, provides practical guidance on identifying regional origins, and discusses rug care, display, and market valuation. The multiple editions — the book was revised and expanded several times through the 1980s — make bibliographic identification important: the earliest Desert-Southwest editions are Tier 3 collector targets; the later revised editions are working references available at modest prices. Maxwell is not a scholar in the Amsden or Kent sense, but his practical knowledge of the trading-post system and his ability to communicate regional-style distinctions to a general audience made the book the standard popular introduction for a generation of collectors.

Noel Bennett and Tiana Bighorse, Working with the Wool: How to Weave a Navajo Rug (Northland Press, Flagstaff, 1971) and Navajo Weaving Way (1974) constitute the most important instructional documentation of Navajo weaving technique from a Navajo-perspective source. Bennett, an Anglo-American weaver and teacher, studied weaving with Tiana Bighorse, a Navajo weaver from Tuba City, Arizona, and the two women collaborated on these instructional books that present the complete weaving process — from sheep selection and shearing through wool preparation, spinning, dyeing, loom construction, and weaving — as taught in the Navajo way, with Bighorse's voice and traditional approach preserved in the text. The Northland Press first editions of both titles are Tier 2-3 collector targets; the books have been reprinted and remain in print in later editions. Bennett subsequently published additional weaving instructional books including The Weaver's Pathway (Northland Press, 1974) exploring the design dimension of Navajo weaving. The Bennett-Bighorse collaboration is significant because it documents Navajo weaving technique from the inside — as transmitted knowledge within a Navajo teaching relationship — rather than from the outside as ethnographic observation.

H.L. James, Rugs and Posts: The Story of Navajo Weaving and the Role of the Indian Trader (various editions, multiple publishers) is the primary book-length treatment of the trading post system's role in shaping Navajo rug production. James documents individual trading posts — their locations, their traders, the regional styles they fostered — and provides the most systematic available account of the trader-weaver commercial relationship. The book exists in multiple editions published by different imprints, making bibliographic identification necessary; earlier editions are Tier 3 collector targets. The trading post narrative connects the weaving literature to the broader commercial-and-cultural history of the Navajo reservation that intersects the jewelry and sovereignty literatures.

Anthony Berlant and Mary Hunt Kahlenberg, Walk in Beauty: The Navajo and Their Blankets (New York Graphic Society, Boston, 1977) is the landmark color-plate survey of classic-period Navajo blankets. Published by the New York Graphic Society — the premier American publisher of large-format art reproduction books in the 1970s — Walk in Beauty documents approximately 200 textiles from museum and private collections in exceptional color photography. Kahlenberg, a textile curator, provides the scholarly apparatus; Berlant, a collector and dealer, brings market knowledge. The book appeared at the height of the 1970s collecting boom for classic Navajo textiles, when first-phase and second-phase chief blankets were achieving unprecedented auction prices. The NYGSC production quality — the color plates are among the finest reproductions of Navajo textiles ever published — is the book's primary collector value. The 1977 NYGSC first edition hardcover with dust jacket is a Tier 1-2 target; the book was not reprinted in equivalent quality. Signed copies by both authors surface occasionally.

Marian Rodee, Old Navajo Rugs: Their Development from 1900 to 1940 (University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1981) and Weaving of the Southwest (Schiffer Publishing, 1987) represent the institutional-curator perspective. Rodee served as curator at the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM and drew on the Maxwell's textile collections for her analyses. Old Navajo Rugs is a focused chronological study of the transitional period — the decades when blanket weaving gave way to rug weaving for the commercial market — and is the best single source for understanding the aesthetic and technical changes of that critical period. The 1981 UNM Press first is the Tier 2-3 target. Weaving of the Southwest (Schiffer, 1987) extends the scope to include Pueblo and Hispanic weaving traditions alongside the Navajo material, providing the broader Southwestern textile context. The Schiffer first is a Tier 3 target.

Kate Peck Kent, Navajo Weaving: Three Centuries of Change (School of American Research Press, Santa Fe, 1985) is the definitive analytical history. Kent (1914-1987), a professor of anthropology at the University of Denver and the foremost American textile analyst of her generation, produced the most rigorous chronological treatment of Navajo weaving development. The book is organized by period — Pueblo antecedents, Classic Period (1650-1868), Late Classic and Transition (1868-1895), and the Rug Period (1895-present) — and within each period Kent analyzes weave structure, yarn type, fiber content, dye identification, and design development with a precision that enables systematic dating and attribution of undocumented textiles. The School of American Research (now School for Advanced Research) Press imprint places the book within the most important institutional publishing program for Southwestern anthropology. The 1985 SAR Press first edition is a Tier 1-2 collector target; the print run was a modest academic-press production, and fine copies are not abundant. Kent also produced Pueblo Indian Textiles (SAR Press, 1983), the companion volume on Pueblo weaving that complements the Navajo treatment and establishes the ancestral Pueblo context.

Joe Ben Wheat, Blanket Weaving in the Southwest (University of Arizona Press, Tucson, 2003; edited by Ann Lane Hedlund) is the comprehensive monument of the field. Wheat (1916-1997) spent over four decades as curator of anthropology at the University of Colorado Museum in Boulder, and he devoted much of that career to the systematic study of Southwestern textiles. He personally examined thousands of textiles in museum collections across the country, building a typological framework based on fiber analysis, yarn structure, dye chemistry, weave structure, and design composition. The resulting classification system enables more precise dating and regional attribution of undocumented textiles than any prior scheme.

Wheat died in 1997 before completing the manuscript. Ann Lane Hedlund, a textile scholar at Arizona State University, assembled the book from Wheat's extensive research files, notes, photographs, and draft chapters. The resulting volume is massive — over 400 pages with hundreds of illustrations — and covers not only Navajo but also Pueblo and Spanish Colonial weaving traditions, providing the full Southwestern textile context that Amsden and Kent treated in more focused fashion. The 2003 University of Arizona Press first edition is a large-format hardcover with dust jacket, published in a modest academic-press print run. It is a Tier 1 collector target. Because Wheat died before publication, signed copies are impossible (closed signature pool, d. 1997); Hedlund-signed copies, where they exist, are the closest available signed variant and trade at premium.

Tyrone Campbell, Joel Kopp, and Kate Kopp, Navajo Pictorial Weaving, 1880-1950: Folk Art Images of Native Americans (Dutton Studio Books, 1991) documents the pictorial weaving tradition with extensive illustrations. The Kopp family were prominent New York dealers in Navajo textiles whose gallery (America Hurrah) was a major force in the secondary market. Tyrone Campbell also contributed to the documentation of the Fred Harvey Company textile holdings, including his work on Treasures of the Fred Harvey Collection, which surveys the company's accumulated holdings of Navajo rugs and blankets — the commercial-period archive now housed at the Heard Museum in Phoenix. The Campbell-Kopp pictorial-weaving book and the Harvey collection documentation are both Tier 2 targets.

Ann Lane Hedlund, Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century: Kin, Community, and Collectors (University of Arizona Press, 2004) is the primary scholarly treatment of contemporary Navajo weaving as a living social and economic practice. Hedlund, building on her fieldwork with Navajo weaving communities and her editorial work on the Wheat manuscript, examines how weaving is transmitted within families, how community networks sustain the tradition, and how the collector market shapes contemporary production. The 2004 first is a Tier 2-3 target and essential for understanding the current state of the tradition.

The Fred Harvey Company's Indian Department, operating along the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway corridor from approximately 1902 through the mid-twentieth century, was a major commercial channel for Navajo rugs. Herman Schweizer, Harvey's head buyer for Indian goods from 1901 to 1943, purchased Navajo rugs in volume through the trading post network and sold them at Harvey House hotels and gift shops. The Alvarado Hotel in downtown Albuquerque (1902, demolished 1970) was the principal New Mexico venue; the Hopi House at the Grand Canyon was the Arizona flagship. Schweizer's purchasing standards — favoring smaller, lighter rugs accessible to tourist budgets; grading by quality; stamping Harvey-trademark pieces — influenced what traders encouraged weavers to produce and created a mass-market infrastructure that sustained weaving as an economic activity while channeling it toward tourist-market standardization.

The Harvey Company textile collection, assembled by Schweizer over four decades, is now held by the Heard Museum in Phoenix and constitutes the primary institutional archive for the commercial-period weaving trade. The collection includes historic blankets and rugs, documentation photographs, correspondence, and purchase records. The turquoise and jewelry pillar covers the Harvey Company's parallel role in the Indian jewelry market; the overlap between the two collecting literatures is substantial, and the Howard-Pardue Inventing the Southwest (Heard Museum / Northland Publishing, 1996) treats both textiles and jewelry within the Harvey commercial framework. For the collector building a comprehensive Southwest Indian arts library, the Harvey Company literature is the connective tissue between the weaving and jewelry canons.

School for Advanced Research (SAR) Indian Arts Research Center (Santa Fe NM, formerly School of American Research). The SAR holds one of the most important collections of historic Navajo textiles in North America — approximately 12,000 objects in the Indian Arts Research Center, ranging from Classic Period chief blankets and serapes through transitional-period textiles to documented regional-style rugs. The SAR collection is a research collection, accessible to qualified scholars and organized groups by appointment, not a general-admission exhibition. SAR published Kate Peck Kent's Navajo Weaving: Three Centuries of Change (1985) and Kent's Pueblo Indian Textiles (1983) through the SAR Press, the most important institutional publishing program for Southwestern anthropology. SAR Press catalogs and exhibition publications are essential collector references.

Wheelwright Museum of the American Indian (Santa Fe NM, 704 Camino Lejo). Founded in 1937 by Mary Cabot Wheelwright and Navajo singer Hastiin Klah (1867-1937), the Wheelwright holds significant textile collections with emphasis on documented Navajo provenance. Klah himself was a master weaver as well as a singer (ceremonial practitioner) — an unusual combination, as weaving was traditionally women's work among the Navajo. Klah's sandpainting tapestries, woven from the 1910s through the 1930s, reproduce ceremonial sandpainting imagery in textile form and are among the most important individual Navajo textiles extant. The Wheelwright's collection emphasis on materials acquired through Navajo community relationships rather than commercial dealer channels gives it a distinctive character.

Heard Museum (Phoenix AZ). The Heard holds the Fred Harvey Company textile collection (the primary commercial-period archive), presents regular textile exhibitions, and maintains the most comprehensive institutional publication program in the Southwestern Indian arts field. The Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market annual catalogs document prize-winning weavers and provide a year-by-year record of contemporary production standards. The museum's collection also includes significant historic Navajo textiles from the Barry Goldwater and other major private collections.

Museum of Northern Arizona (MNA) (Flagstaff AZ). The MNA holds substantial Navajo textile collections and hosts the annual Navajo Festival of Arts and Culture (formerly the Navajo Craftsman Exhibition, established 1941), the longest-running annual juried exhibition of Navajo arts. The festival showcases contemporary weavers and produces catalogs that document the current state of the tradition. MNA publications, particularly from the mid-twentieth century, provide important documentation of the transition-era and early-commercial-period textile production in the western Navajo Nation.

Additional institutional collections include the Maxwell Museum of Anthropology at UNM (where Marian Rodee curated, drawing on the collection for her published work), the Millicent Rogers Museum in Taos (holding the collection of Standard Oil heiress Millicent Rogers, who collected Navajo textiles and jewelry extensively in the 1940s-1950s), and the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian (holding major Navajo textile holdings transferred from the Museum of the American Indian, Heye Foundation). The Denver Art Museum textile collection, which Kent drew upon for her research, is another significant institutional resource.

Contemporary Navajo weaving is experiencing a significant revaluation. Several factors drive this: the recognition of master weavers as individual named artists rather than anonymous craftspeople; rising auction prices for both historic and contemporary textiles; institutional exhibition programs that present weaving as fine art with individual attribution; and community-based efforts to transmit weaving knowledge to younger generations, often through programs at chapter houses, community colleges (Dine College at Tsaile, Arizona, offers weaving instruction), and family teaching networks.

The contemporary market distinguishes sharply between production rugs made for the tourist and decorative market — smaller pieces, commercial yarns, standardized designs, sold through trading posts, galleries, and online retailers — and exhibition or collector textiles made by identified master weavers with individual attribution, documented provenance, and exhibition history. The latter category commands prices comparable to fine art. Two Grey Hills tapestry-weave rugs by recognized master weavers routinely sell for five-figure prices to investment-grade prices and occasionally higher; large, fine-weave pieces by the most accomplished contemporary weavers are genuine art-market objects.

The churro sheep revival is a significant contemporary development with direct implications for textile quality. The Navajo-Churro Sheep Association, the Dine be' iina (Navajo Lifeway) program, and individual rancher-weavers have worked to rebuild the churro flock destroyed by the government livestock-reduction programs of the 1930s-1940s. Churro wool — long-staple, low-grease, with the characteristic luster and hand that distinguishes it from commercial processed wool — is again available to weavers who choose to use it, and churro-wool rugs are marketed at premium. The churro revival connects the contemporary weaving movement to the broader Navajo cultural-sovereignty and food-sovereignty movements documented in the sovereignty and governance literature.

Mark Winter's The Master Weavers (2011) is the primary book-length documentation of the contemporary revival, focused on the Two Grey Hills region. Hedlund's Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century (2004) provides the scholarly framework. The Wheelwright Museum and Museum of Northern Arizona annual exhibitions and catalogs document the broader contemporary scene. For the book collector, this contemporary literature is Tier 2-3 and represents an active, growing field — the books being published now will be the collector targets of the next generation.

Amsden, Navaho Weaving, Fine Arts Press 1934 first edition. Large quarto (10 x 13 inches). Tan/buff cloth boards, front-board textile-design stamping. Fine Arts Press Santa Ana imprint on title page and spine. 261 pages plus 22 tipped-in color plates on glossy stock. Approximately 130 black-and-white illustrations. Printed paper dust jacket (scarce). The 1964 Rio Grande Press reprint (Glorieta NM) is smaller format, different binding, Rio Grande Press imprint. The 1975 Dover paperback is the budget working reference. The Fine Arts Press first is the artifact; condition drives pricing dramatically — foxing, board wear, and spine fading are common on eighty-plus-year-old oversized cloth-bound books.

Reichard, Spider Woman, Columbia University Press 1934. Standard CUP academic cloth binding. Dust jacket with textual or photographic design. 287 pages with black-and-white photographs. The UNM Press paperback reprint is the working reference. The CUP first with intact jacket is Tier 2.

Reichard, Navajo Shepherd and Weaver, J.J. Augustin 1936. Augustin was a specialist academic publisher with modest print runs. Cloth binding, printed dust jacket. 222 pages with photographs and diagrams. The Rio Grande Press reprint (1968) is the alternate. The Augustin first with jacket is Tier 2.

Bennett and Bighorse, Working with the Wool, Northland Press 1971. Northland Press Flagstaff first edition, illustrated boards or cloth with jacket. Instructional photographs throughout. The book has been reprinted in multiple editions and remains in print. The 1971 Northland first is Tier 2-3.

Berlant and Kahlenberg, Walk in Beauty, NYGSC 1977. Large-format New York Graphic Society production. Exceptional color plates (the book's primary value). Cloth binding with photographic dust jacket. The NYGSC first is the only edition with the original plate quality. Tier 1-2.

Kent, Navajo Weaving: Three Centuries of Change, SAR Press 1985. Standard SAR Press academic production, cloth or paperback. Photographs, diagrams, analytical tables. The SAR Press first cloth edition is Tier 1-2; the paperback is Tier 3 working reference.

Wheat, Blanket Weaving in the Southwest, University of Arizona Press 2003. Large-format hardcover with dust jacket. Over 400 pages, hundreds of illustrations. Posthumous publication, modest academic-press print run. Tier 1. Cannot be signed by Wheat (d. 1997); Hedlund-signed copies are the premium variant.

J.B. Moore mail-order catalogs, Crystal Trading Post, 1903 and 1911. Original catalogs are Tier 1 rarities — ephemeral commercial documents with very low survival rates. The Avanyu Publishing facsimile editions (Albuquerque, 1987) are Tier 3 working references and the realistic acquisition target for most collectors.

Tier 1 — Trophy targets (respectable collectible value and above): Charles Avery Amsden Navaho Weaving: Its Technic and History Fine Arts Press Santa Ana 1934 first edition fine condition with dust jacket (signed copies are once-in-a-decade offerings; unsigned fine copies with intact jacket are the realistic Tier 1 target); Joe Ben Wheat Blanket Weaving in the Southwest University of Arizona Press 2003 first edition fine with dust jacket, particularly Hedlund-signed copies; Anthony Berlant and Mary Hunt Kahlenberg Walk in Beauty New York Graphic Society 1977 first edition fine with dust jacket; Kate Peck Kent Navajo Weaving: Three Centuries of Change SAR Press 1985 first cloth edition fine; J.B. Moore Crystal Trading Post original mail-order catalogs 1903 and 1911 (genuine ephemeral rarities); Amsden 1934 Fine Arts Press first without jacket but in genuinely fine condition (entry Tier 1 / upper Tier 2 depending on condition).

Tier 2 — Collector targets (respectable collectible value): Gladys Reichard Spider Woman Columbia University Press 1934 first with dust jacket; Reichard Navajo Shepherd and Weaver J.J. Augustin 1936 first with jacket; Noel Bennett and Tiana Bighorse Working with the Wool Northland Press 1971 first; Bennett and Bighorse Navajo Weaving Way 1974 first; Marian Rodee Old Navajo Rugs UNM Press 1981 first; Rodee Weaving of the Southwest Schiffer 1987 first; Mark Winter The Master Weavers Historic Toadlena Trading Post 2011 signed; Ann Lane Hedlund Navajo Weaving in the Late Twentieth Century University of Arizona Press 2004 first; Tyrone Campbell, Joel Kopp, and Kate Kopp Navajo Pictorial Weaving Dutton 1991 first; Kent Pueblo Indian Textiles SAR Press 1983 first cloth; Kathleen L. Howard and Diana F. Pardue Inventing the Southwest Heard Museum / Northland 1996 first (cross-category with the jewelry literature); unsigned Amsden 1934 Fine Arts Press first in good-to-very-good condition without jacket.

Tier 3 — Working library (under the mid-range threshold): Gilbert Maxwell Navajo Rugs: Past, Present & Future all editions (the practical regional-style guide); H.L. James Rugs and Posts all editions; Amsden Navaho Weaving Rio Grande Press 1964 reprint or Dover 1975 paperback; Reichard reprints (UNM Press paperback editions); Bennett and Bighorse later printings; J.B. Moore Crystal Trading Post catalog facsimiles (Avanyu Publishing 1987); Rodee paperback editions; Museum of Northern Arizona Navajo exhibition catalogs; Wheelwright Museum textile exhibition catalogs; Heard Museum Indian Fair and Market annual catalogs; Santa Fe Indian Market annual catalogs (weaving categories); Noel Bennett The Weaver's Pathway Northland 1974; standard Southwestern textile survey paperbacks; Fred Harvey Company rug souvenir catalogs and price lists (ephemera); Gladys Reichard Navajo Religion: A Study of Symbolism Pantheon 1950 (two volumes, the cosmological context for Spider Woman and weaving symbolism, reprinted by University of Arizona Press); Kate Peck Kent Prehistoric Textiles of the Southwest SAR Press 1983 paperback.

Navajo weaving books intersect several other collecting canons documented in NMLP pillar guides. The trading post system connects directly to the turquoise and jewelry literature — Hubbell Trading Post is central to both the rug and silverwork traditions, and the Fred Harvey Company commercialized both. The Pueblo weaving antecedents connect to the broader Zuni, Hopi, and Pueblo arts literature. The Spanish Colonial weaving tradition — Rio Grande blankets, Chimayo weaving, the Trujillo and Ortega family workshops — overlaps with the Hispano folk art canon. The churro sheep revival and contemporary Navajo cultural movements connect to the sovereignty and governance literature. And the archaeological textiles that predate all historical weaving traditions connect to the archaeology canon, where Basketmaker-period textile fragments from dry caves are among the earliest preserved Southwestern textiles.

Navajo weaving and textile books arrive in NMLP donation pickups regularly — from Albuquerque-area collector estates, from Gallup and Farmington collector libraries where the trading-post-era dealer networks concentrated (for Farmington-area estates with weaving libraries, my Farmington & San Juan County estate cleanout service covers the full Four Corners corridor), from Santa Fe estates with proximity to the SAR and Wheelwright collections, and from Flagstaff-area estates connected to the Museum of Northern Arizona community. The donor surface for weaving books is slightly different from the jewelry-literature donor surface: weavers themselves (both Navajo and Anglo-American students of Navajo weaving), textile scholars, interior designers who collected Navajo rugs as decorative objects, and trading-post descendants all appear in the NMLP donation pipeline.

NMLP routes Tier 1 trophy items — fine Amsden 1934 Fine Arts Press firsts, the Wheat 2003 posthumous monument, fine Berlant-Kahlenberg Walk in Beauty 1977 NYGSC firsts — to specialist dealers (Sherwood's Spirit of America Santa Fe, Adobe Gallery, Morning Star Gallery) or to specialist auction channels (Heritage Western Americana, Bonhams Native American Art). Tier 2 trade firsts route through SellBooksABQ standard hand-sort. Tier 3 subsequent printings and working references route to APS Title I schools (Southwest Indian arts and Navajo cultural studies curriculum), UNM Children's Hospital reading program, and Little Free Library stocking.

Important note on objects: NMLP does NOT accept Navajo rugs, blankets, textiles, or other woven objects in donation pickups. Those objects belong with specialist textile dealers, tribal cultural programs (the Navajo Nation Museum at Window Rock, the Navajo Nation Historic Preservation Department), and museum accessions programs. Donor inquiries about Navajo textile objects are routed to Morning Star Gallery, Shiprock Santa Fe, the Wheelwright Museum Case Trading Post, or appropriate tribal cultural programs. Free statewide pickup with no condition limit and no minimum quantity applies to the books only — schedule your pickup or call/text 702-496-4214.