Eyedazzlers!
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SHINí BITIIN —The Weaver’s Pathway
JINI
The Story Begins
The
Eyedazzler Project, “Eyedazzlers: a Two-Century Romance of Navajo
Weaving” showcases contemporary Navajo Eyedazzlers rugs, the master
weavers who create them and the historic 19th century Navajo “Germantowns”
that continue to inspire them. A weave of art, soul and industry, their
story entwines the lives of people across two centuries.The Eyedazzler
Project is produced by Bluebead Mountain
Trading Co.
The story begins in 1863 as U. S. Army troops under Col. Kit Carson lay waste to Dinétah, starving the Navajo people into surrender and a 400 mile forced march—The Long Walk—to Bosque Redondo, a barren no-man’s-land near the New Mexico-Texas border. Bereft of the food, clothing and shelter traditionally provided by their life-giving sheep, in sorrow and despair the Diné (Navajo for “the people”) sought warmth and solace in weaving, Spiderwoman’s gift to their ancestors in the age before time. Re-spinning raveled threads from army-issued blankets and stolen soldiers’ underwear, they wove. Inspired, an observant army quartermaster placed a requisition for yarn. Shipped from Philadelphia, the fine-spun woolen yarn, in synthetic colors of startling brilliance, came from the city’s world-renowned Germantown mills.
And
so, as Diné leaders envisioned and began to plan their
homecoming, the people’s weavers drew inspiration from the new Germantown
yarns in rare and vibrant hues and began to create transcendent works
whose beauty belied the dislocation and pain out of which they were born.
After their joyful homecoming in 1868, and the coming of the railroad
and reservation Indian traders, the Diné continued to
receive Germantown yarn from which they created works of extraordinary
fineness in quality and boldness and complexity of design, in dazzling
colors rivaled only by the halos of the sun— Eyedazzlers.
A mere forty years later, around 1900, this brief flourish of creative freedom came to a close. Seeking to create a market for Southwest Indian art and “curios” among Victorian mail order shoppers, and artists, tourists and collectors flocking by train to the exotic Southwest, traders encouraged a return to weaving with “native” handspun yarn, muted “natural” colors, and “authentic” oriental-inspired “Indian” patterns. Once-admired Eyedazzler designs were decried as “abominable combinations,” and the commercial banishment of factory-processed Germantown yarn brought an end to the most exuberant and controversial era of Navajo artistic determination—until now.
Historic Germantown Eyedazzler, c. 1880
Germantown Renaissance Eyedazzler, c. 2000, by Ella King (Detail)
Germantowen Yarn Skeins
Weavers' Tools: Combs and Battens
For more, please email