•  Describe the colors, lines, shapes, materials in the Navajo blanket.
•  Imagine wearing the blanket.  How would the patterns change?
•  Research information about Navajo textiles.  What was the source of the materials?  How were the looms constructed?  Who wove the textiles?  What do the patterns mean?
•  Invite a weaver from the community to come to the class and demonstrate weaving on a loom.
•  Create weavings with paper and fiber in a variety of patterns and colors that emulate designs in Navajo blankets.
(see Art Lesson: Weaving Patterns, pg. 12)

• Study the blanket. Describe the different lines, patterns and geometric shapes. Which shape is prominent?

• The design relies on a central diamond shape, partially repeated as triangles on the sides, top, and bottom. How did the artist emphasize the diamond shape in the overall composition?

• What effect do the black and white dotted lines around the diamond shapes have on the composition? How would the work be different without these dotted patterns?

• Discuss repetition of the diamond shape and explain how repetition gives unity and balance to the blanket. Are there any other elements (color, line, etc.) that repeat?

• The design of the blanket is both calm and dynamic. Discuss.

• What material is the blanket made of? Do you know how this blanket was made?

• How do you think this blanket was used? Is it functional or decorative or both?

• The title of this work is Man's Wearing Blanket, or Phase Three Chief's Blanket. What does this last part of the title mean?

• This blanket represents the third and final stage in the development of Navajo chief’s blankets. These blankets were not made for chiefs, but since they are so finely woven, they are associated with the power and affluence of chiefs. What does the first part of the title refer to?

• The blanket can be hung on a wall as well as worn. What do you think will happen to the triangular shapes when this blanket is worn?

• When the blanket is worn, the design responds to the body.  The central diamond falls in the middle of a wearer’s back, and the edges of the blanket wrap around to the front so that the triangles in the middle of the edges join to make a second diamond of the same shape and position.  Discuss how the symmetry of the design is completed by wearing the garment.

• When seen displayed flat on a wall, as in a museum, the composition focuses on the balanced arrangement of triangles, diamonds, and horizontal stripes. Which type of use do you prefer? Why?

• The Navajo peoples of the Southwest have been weaving cotton and animal fibers for over 1000 years. By circa A.D. 800, the development of a true loom led to the production of large carrying and storage bags and wearing blankets whose principal decorative pattern was based on the horizontal stripe.  Weaving with wool began when the Spaniards introduced sheep-raising in New Mexico about 1600. What else do you know about the Navajos? Where do they live now?

• After the nineteenth-century conflicts with the United States government, the Navajo were removed from their native lands, and returned to a small reservation in their homeland in 1868. There they reconstructed their way of life, built up their sheep herds, and continued their weaving traditions. Discuss the political implications of this and also consider the current political climate.

This blanket represents the third and final stage in the development of Navajo chief’s blankets.  The blanket is finely woven in bright red, blue, black, and white.  The design relies on a central diamond shape, partially repeated as triangles on the sides, top, and bottom, and overlying horizontal stripes.  These blankets were not made for chiefs, but since they are so finely woven, they are associated with the power and affluence of chiefs.

 

The blanket’s pattern varies considerably, depending on how it is viewed.  When seen displayed flat on a wall, as in a museum, the composition focuses on the balanced arrangement of triangles, diamonds, and horizontal stripes.  When the blanket is worn, the design responds to the body.  The central diamond falls in the middle of a wearer’s back, and the edges of the blanket wrap around to the front so that the triangles in the middle of the edges join to make a second diamond of the same shape and position.  Thus the symmetry of the design is completed by wearing the garment.

 

The Navajo peoples of the Southwest have been weaving cotton and animal fibers for over 1000 years.¹ By circa A.D. 800, the development of a true loom led to the production of large carrying and storage bags and wearing blankets whose principal decorative pattern was based on the horizontal stripe.  Weaving with wool began when the Spaniards introduced sheep-raising in New Mexico about 1600.

 

The Navajos came to the Southwest as hunters and raiders between 1400 and 1500.  During the seventeenth century, they learned weaving from the neighboring Pueblo farmers.  In the Navajo culture, weaving became established as a women’s art, because women were engaged in more sedentary, home-based occupations.  When the Navajo began to raise sheep as a source of food, they probably began using the wool for weaving.  In the mid 1800s the Navajo began to use commercial yarns, acquired through trade, in order to obtain certain favorite colors, notably red.  Throughout this period, blankets were important as the Navajo expanded their trade with the Pueblos, Utes, Apaches, Comanches, and Spaniards.

 

The Navajo tradition of blanket-weaving survived the nineteenth-century conflicts with the United States government, the removal of the Navajo from their native lands, and their return to a small reservation in their homeland in 1868.  There they reconstructed their way of life, built up their sheep herds, and continued their weaving traditions.

 

1. Kate Peck Kent, Navajo Weaving:  Three Centuries of Change (Santa Fee:  School of American Research Press, 1985).